Senate President Pro Tempore Loren Legarda emphasized the importance of the Paris Agreement to the Philippines as a Philippine delegation of senators, led by Senate President Juan Miguel Zubiri, met with French legislators in Paris last 25 October.
"One of the many advocacies and issues that bond France and the Philippines is the Paris Agreement. Being number one in the world risk index, as the most vulnerable nation in the world, we value our ratification of the Paris Accord in 2015," Legarda said during their meeting with Guillaume Kasbarian, President of France's Commission for Economic Affairs and Member of Parliament of the National Assembly (Eure-et-Loir).
The World Risk Index 2022 report released last September ranked the Philippines as the country with the highest natural disaster risk among 193 nations globally.
Legarda urged the European Union to increase its National Determined Contributions, the climate action plans submitted by nations, to lessen the impact of climate change on vulnerable countries such as the Philippines.
"It's been seven years since the ratification of the accord and it is incumbent upon industrialized nations in the EU, including France, to perhaps scale up the National Determined Contributions so that vulnerable nations like the Philippines, which only emits 1/3 of 1 percent in terms of global greenhouse gas emissions, will not be as affected," Legarda said.
"That is one of the advocacies that I share with my colleagues, which we know the French government and the French people hold dearly as well, because this impacts our energy security, our food security," she added.
The European Commission has committed to decrease greenhouse gas emissions from the EU by 2030 and produce "net zero" emissions by 2050, according to the World Bank. The WB also said that 76 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions come from China, the United States, and the EU.
Legarda and the rest of the Philippine delegation also met with the French-South East Asian Friendship Group led by Senator Mathieu Darnaud and Madame Gisele Jourda, Vice President of the Committee on European Affairs and President-designate for the Philippines.
During the meeting, Legarda, founder and president of the Philippines-France Parliamentary Friendship Association, conveyed the Philippines' commitment to the High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People. She also thanked France for its continued assistance to the Philippines.
"I'm glad that France does not stop in helping give technological, technical, and capacity-building and even financial assistance in so far as biodiversity conservation, sustainable development, and climate action (are concerned)," she said.
In support of the Philippines' actions against climate change, the Agence Fançaise de Développement has committed EUR 482 million for the country. In 2021, a policy-based loan amounting to EUR 250 million was granted to the Philippines by France as funding support for disaster risk reduction, preparedness, and response at the local level.
"We are grateful for your continued support for the Philippines and other developing nations, and as the COP talks start in the first week of November in Egypt this year, we hope that France will be on the side of developing nations so that the $100-billion commitment in the Paris Agreement would finally be realized, and so that the issues of loss and damage, which are important to vulnerable nations, could also be defended or even discussed," Legarda said.
As a legislator, Legarda has championed environmental protection and climate action in the Philippines. In recognition of her work, she was bestowed the title of Chevalier (Knight) in the Ordre national de la légion d'Honneur (National Order of the French Legion of Honor) on 18 February 2016 by then-French president Francois Holland through former French Ambassador Thierry Mathou.
The Philippine delegation, composed of Legarda, Zubiri, Senate Majority Leader Joel Villanueva, Senate Deputy Majority Leader Joseph Victor Ejercito, and Senators Manuel Lapid, Maria Lourdes Binay, Grace Poe, and Christopher Lawrence Go, also met with Senator Daniel Gremillet, member of the Committee for Economic Affairs and President of the Study Group on Energy; and Pascal Chaix, Deputy Director for International Relations Division of the Atomic Energy Commission.