FRANKFURT, Germany—The Asian Development Bank (ADB) said that while climate change-related projects and programs take time to implement, countries like the Philippines, must focus on them to attain sustainable development.
Stephen P. Groff, the bank’s vice president for East Asia, Southeast Asia and the Pacific, said the challenge for the Philippines and other developing ADB member-countries with a climate-change program or
project is implementation.
Groff said implementation is also the key in realizing the aims of the Green Jobs law, which was recently passed by the Philippines, as well as other climate-change projects and programs.
“It’s relatively easy to announce these things, and its the right and important thing to do, but implementing and executing those things just takes time, and its frustrating for all of us, but it is not something that’s unique to the Philippines, all countries face these challenges,” Groff said.
“It takes time, but it also takes continued dedication by the administration, takes continued perseverance by people of the country, and I’m confident that that’s the direction that the Philippines will go on, because it is really the only direction the country can go on to be on a sustainable path,” he added.
Groff said achieving sustainable development is similar to ramping up the country’s infrastructure spending—it takes a considerable amount of time.
He said the government aimed to increase infrastructure spending to 5 percent of GDP from only 2 percent, which is among the lowest in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations area.
However, documents obtained by the BusinessMirror in April showed that the country is nowhere near achieving its 5 percent of GDP goal.
Data showed that programmed national spending for infrastructure was at 3.5 percent of GDP, or P442.31 billion, in 2014 and 4.48 percent of GDP, or P595.77 billion, in 2015.
However, actual spending as a percentage of GDP was at 2.74 percent, or P346.24 billion, in 2014 and 3.28 percent, or P435.3 billion, in 2015.
“At the beginning of the Aquino administration, they set out a goal to increase their infrastructure spending, which has regionally been low compared to a lot of your Asean countries, and they’ve succeeded in increasing infrastructure spend quite dramatically over the last number of years, but that’s taken quite some
time,” Groff said.
Nonetheless, Groff added that the ADB recognized the efforts made by the national government in attaining sustainable and inclusive development.
In March the National Economic and Development Authority (Neda) bared the results of AmBisyon2040.
It showed 79.2 percent of Filipinos want a simple and comfortable life in 25 years and 3.9 percent of Filipinos wanted the life of the rich.
A simple and comfortable life means owning a medium-sized home; earning enough to support everyday needs; owning at least one vehicle; providing for the children’s college education and traveling around the country for vacation.
The data from AmBisyon2040 will be translated into national targets and goals that will become the backbone of future development plans.
Planning for a better future was also part of the main message of the ADB President Takehiko Nakao in his closing news conference here.
Nakao said the ADB and its work in developing member-countries (DMCs) in the next 20 years will be incorporated in its Strategy 2030, or its Long Term Strategic Framework (LTSF).
The ADB new Strategy 2030 will replace the bank’s Strategy 2020 released in Madrid, Spain, in 2008. The LTSF 2030 may include climate finance as a priority of the bank in the next few years.
This will be complemented by the ADB’s commitment to double its climate-change financing to an annual average of around $6 billion from the current average of $3 billion a year.
“Many of you expressed strong support for the preparation of Strategy 2030, and stressed the importance of close consultation with all stakeholders, including CSOs [civil-society organizations]. The new strategy will help us define our approach to the Sustainable Development Goals [SDGs] and COP21 [21st Conference of Parties]. It will also elaborate on our approaches to upper middle-income countries and regional cooperation and integration,” Nakao said.
In July 2015 the ADB, together with other multilateral development banks and private institutions, have committed at least $400 billion for projects related to the SDGs in the next three years.
The ADB, World Bank, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and others will pool some $400 billion in the next three years to support the world’s Agenda 2030.
The World Economic Forum also disclosed that three blended finance initiatives, with a collective amount of $100 billion over the next five years, was launched at the United Nations Financing for Development Conference in Addis Ababa.