August 5th, 2024
House Ways and Means Chair Joey Sarte Salceda (Albay, 2nd district) says that asserting the country’s preeminence in the fight for climate justice is President Marcos’s “biggest foreign policy victory so far” as the House tax committee approved the bill granting juridical status and privileges to the Loss and Damage Fund Board.
The substitute bill, referred to the tax committee by the Committees on Foreign Affairs and Climate Change, grants legal and juridical personality to the LDF Board.
“This is the most concrete demonstration that we have recovered our moral ascendancy in climate advocacy.”
“The principle of loss and damage was a hard-won victory for developing countries like the Philippines. Having been a member of various Philippine delegations to the Conference of Parties or COP, I, alongside many climate experts in the Philippines, fought to have developed and industrialized countries acknowledge that there are losses and damages that can no longer be addressed by mitigation and adaptation – and should thus be compensated by those who benefited from emissions the most,” Salceda said.
“I fought hard for that principle in Lima, Peru, and chaired the predecessor of the Loss and Damage Fund, the UN Green Climate Fund, for which I raised some USD 13 billion, and was elected as its first Asian co-chair. We fought for the principle of Loss and Damage formally as part of the Group of 77 with China, when we submitted a formal position on November 12, 2013 to the Warsaw talks under the UNFCCC.”
Salceda was also former chair of the UN Green Climate Fund.
“When loss and damage was finally acknowledged as a consensus position, it was the result of a decade of negotiation founded on the intellectual and moral work done by the Philippine delegation.”
Salceda also paid tribute to the late Ambassador Bernaditas Muller, former lead negotiator and coordinator for the Group of 77 plus China, an umbrella group of some 130 developing countries who pushed for the principle of loss and damage in climate talks.
“This is the fruit of her tireless work,” Salceda said.