The Philippines is one of the countries that is most vulnerable and naturally prone to disaster and to the effects of Climate Change. Therefore, it is important that we monitor the environmental laws being legislated all over the world as they have a direct impact on us.

The international environmental climate agreement that is very significant to the Philippines is the Paris Agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which was decided upon at the Conference of the Parties (COP21) in Paris in 2015.  This puts in place a framework for all participating countries to follow through the year 2020.  Some important agreements include the goal to keep global temperature rise to below 2.0 degrees centigrade.

The Philippines actually led a group of about 20 governments in the Paris Climate Agreement that successfully pushed for limiting the rise of global temperature to 1.5 degrees centigrade. Having experienced major destruction and thousands of deaths due to supertyphoons hitting the Philippines, it made sense that we led the efforts to keep global temperatures down.

The COP 21 agreement included other outcomes for all countries, such as:  to set targets, review them every five years and track progress towards those targets; to promote climate resilience actions; and to help developing countries with support in terms of finances, technology and capacity building.

One solution I see in the problems of global warming and climate change is transition to renewable and clean energy for the Philippines and for other countries.  The previous government was focused on providing energy to the country by building more coal plants.  This however is not a good idea because burning of coal is harmful to people's health. The Energy Plan of the Philippines now is more open to a balanced energy mix with lesser coal and fossil fuel sources and more renewables like solar, wind and hydro. Some countries are already using almost 100% energy from renewables so why can't we, too.  Albania, Paraguay, Iceland and Norway have almost 100% and other countries like Germany and Sweden are getting there. All countries should make this their goal.