Climate action means stepped-up efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and strengthen resilience and adaptive capacity to climate-induced impacts, including: climate-related hazards in all countries; integrating climate change measures into national policies, strategies and planning; and improving education, awareness-raising and human and institutional capacity with respect to climate change mitigation, adaptation, impact reduction and early warning. It requires mobilizing US$100 billion annually by 2020 to address the needs of developing countries in moving towards a low-carbon economy.

Every country in the world is already experiencing the devastating effects of climate change. The latest analysis by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that, on average, 21.5 million people have been displaced by climate or weather-related events each year since 2008. Climate change is directly impacts agricultural yields, as harvests of maize, wheat and other major staple crops fell by 40 mega tonnes per year between 1981 and 2002 becaouse of the warmer climate. According to the UN Environment’s Adaptation Finance Gap Report (2016), by 2030 it is estimated that adaptation costs will range between US$140-300 billion per year.If left unchecked, climate change will reverse the progress made over the past years in development, and undermine efforts to achieve the SDGs.

The country is one of the most vulnerable to climate change in the world, with the negative effects on livelihood, health, food security, and impacts on our lives becoming far-reaching and extreme. That the Philippines is ranked so high in the World Risk Index may actually seem both fitting and ironic. It is fitting because given the country’s high exposure to the risks brought about by climate change, the government must respond quickly by putting in place policies aimed at addressing these risks.

Ironically however, while we have enacted climate change and disaster risk reduction laws quickly as a result of our recent climate disasters, our laws have not been very effective. This is because we do not have an integrated approach to climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction and management (DRRM). Unless we address this dichotomy, our climate change and DRRM institutions will continue to fail us.

We should also take note, as Secretary Lucille Sering emphasized in the budget hearing of the Climate Change Commission (CCC), that climate change is not just about disasters: "We have no idea what an increase in temperature will do to our food security. In areas that we went to, local communities have already cited incidents where their crops are decreasing or wilting. Aside from human activities like overfishing, they're seeing a reduction in fish yield. We do not have thorough studies on this yet. The Department of Agriculture [DA] has been targeting production without looking at the impact of weather and the increase in temperature."

The annual average economic losses from climate-related disasters are in the hundreds of billions of dollars. This is not to mention the human impact of geo-physical disasters, which are 91 percent climate-related, and which between 1998 and 2017 killed 1.3 million people, and left 4.4 billion injured. The goal aims to mobilize US$100 billion annually by 2020 to address the needs of developing countries to both adapt to climate change and invest in low-carbon development.

Supporting vulnerable regions will directly contribute not only to Goal 13 but also to the other SDGs. These actions must also go hand in hand with efforts to integrate disaster risk measures, sustainable natural resource management, and human security into national development strategies. It is still possible, with strong political will, increased investment, and using existing technology, to limit the increase in global mean temperature to two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, aiming at 1.5°C, but this requires urgent and ambitious collective action.

The number of people fleeing war, persecution and conflict exceeded 70 million in 2018, the highest level recorded by the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) in almost 70 years. 

In 2019, the United Nations tracked 357 killings and 30 enforced disappearances of human rights defenders, journalists and trade unionists in 47 countries.

And the births of around one in four children under age 5 worldwide are never officially recorded, depriving them of a proof of legal identity crucial for the protection of their rights and for access to justice and social services