RP seeks 'climate risk insurance' to ensure food security

The Philippine government has sought for a “climate risk insurance” that would help its food production sector during the recent United Nations Climate Change Conference in Poznan, Poland.

The move was in line with the government’s bid to ensure food security for the people in the wake of the “creeping” impacts of climate change.

Presidential Adviser on Global Warming and Climate Change Secretary Heherson Alvarez reported this to President Arroyo after leading the Philippine delegation to the 12-day global climate change summit, which is aimed to establish a post-Kyoto Protocol global agreement on climate change.

“At Poznan, we called for a climate risk insurance for food production and livelihood systems such as irrigation, croplands, fishponds, fish ports/wharves, and fruit-bearing tree plantations like mango, mangosteen and pomelo. When these systems are hit by environmental disasters, we can claim for insurance from a Multilateral Adaptation Fund being pushed by Switzerland,” Alvarez stressed.

He said the Poznan conference established that there is currently no available adaptation fund in the world that could help vulnerable archipelagic and small-island nations like the Philippines who are now suffering the early brunt of climate change impacts such as flooding, drought, mudslides and rising sea levels.

But Alvarez said the Swiss government has proposed during the summit the imposition of tariffs to highly developed countries identified in the Annex-1 of the Kyoto Protocol to make up a Multilateral Adaptation Fund.

He said the Swiss government’s proposal indicated a levy of $2 per ton of carbon dioxide emitted, or $0.5 cents per liter of gasoline, to be imposed on highly developed countries.

The proposal, he added, stated that the taxed country would retain 60 percent of the collection while 40 percent would go to the Multilateral Adaptation Fund, which could be used to deal with the relief and rehabilitation of affected communities.

Alvarez explained that under the Philippine government’s proposal submitted to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), instead of seeking outright grants to rehabilitate these communities, a fully transparent insurance system for food production will be put in place even before disasters strike, with the premiums sourced from the Multilateral Adaptation Fund, which is expected to earn $34 billion annually.