Financing in the Time of Climate Emergency

The spate of typhoons in the last decade, and the El Niño that brought with it drought and forest fires across Mindanao, are watershed events demonstrating the accelerated impacts of climate change in the Philippines. The increased frequency and severity of climate impacts increases the burden of financing to address wide ranging loss and damage the country suffers. This chapter asks whether the Philippines’ climate and disaster financing policies are efficiently and effectively addressing climate impacts in the country, especially to its poor municipalities, and communities. This chapter examines such policies by integrating outcomes of climate finance-related projects of the Center for Local and Regional Governance (CLRG) in the past five years. This includes cases of El Niňo 2015–2016 and the problem of funding slow-onset climate disasters, as well as assessments in the aftermath of Typhoons Ondoy, Pepeng, and Yolanda. It also looks at the issues and challenges hounding the implementation of climate and disaster risk reduction (DRR) funds such as the People’s Survival Fund (PSF), risk transfer mechanisms (RTMs), and national DRR funds, especially with respect to budget execution. This chapter recommends urgent climate financing reforms as part of “transformative governance” to address the climate emergency, including the use of a climate finance policy framework.