CLIMATE activists are gearing up for the 21st session of the Conference of Parties (COP21) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), hoping to create a noise loud enough for their demand for climate justice to be heard by Malacañang and world leaders attending the Paris climate talk that will start on November 30.
The Philippines is raring to take part in the climate talks, and is armed with a conditional commitment to reduce carbon emissions by 70 percent, as indicated in its intended nationally determined contribution submission on October 30 to the UNFCCC .
However the country’s commitment is highly dependent on climate finance and other support it will get from 2020 to 2030 as part of its contribution to the global effort to fight climate change.
In the Philippines 10,000 activists, representing climate change-vulnerable communities, religious groups, youth, workers, anticoal and renewable-energy campaigners, march to the streets to join the Global Climate March, demanding for a strong, fair and ambitious global climate agreement.
The Global Climate March consists of 60 other major marches, plus more than 2,300 events, in over 150 countries.
In the Philippines communities in Luzon, the Visayas and Mindanao have started holding a week of actions for climate justice on November 23, mobilizing 20,000 people to issue the resounding call for climate justice.
In Quezon City alone, six marches carrying climate-related themes—Energy Transformation; Right to Food, Land and Water; Justice and Reparations for Affected Peoples; Protect Our Common Home (after Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato Si); Jobs and Just Transition; and Youth—were staged in major roads and converged at the the Quezon Memorial Circle.
The Philippines is one of the countries most vulnerable to climate change. In November 2013 Typhoon Yolanda left a path of death and destruction in Central Philippines, killing over 6,000 people. The typhoon severely affected 171 towns and cities, most of which are still reeling from its devastating impact.