Tap youth for climate innovation, APEC urges

The Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation recently urged the Philippine government to encourage the youth to create climate change innovations and provide them more funds to scale up their projects.

“Climate financing must also focus on climate innovations so we can address problems beyond today, and these must be scalable to ease transition to low carbon emissions,” APEC Business Advisory Council member Brett O’Riley said during the Asian Conference on Climate Change and Disaster Resilience at Asian Institute of Management, Makati City.

“We have 20-year-olds sitting in technology companies who explore climate action that is scientific and internationally verifiable and operable,” he added.

For developing countries like the Philippines, O’Riley said climate technologies are critical for sustainable economic growth as they would likely suffer the worst of climate change, such as extreme drought and typhoons.

Global studies show climate change or drastic movements in temperatures are caused by increasing carbon dioxide emissions from burning of fuels in vehicles and factories, among others.

“Developing countries generate emissions, although lower than developed or highly industrialized countries. But they will likely achieve net-zero emissions faster due to higher financial capacities and bigger pools of scientists,” O’Riley said.

Rommel Antonio Cuenca, deputy executive director of Climate Change Commission in the Philippines, said its officials are intensifying partnerships and virtual learning sessions with local government units and civil groups to collect ideas for climate action.

“We have mentoring sessions, online classes. The metric of success is not the number of applicants for project funding, but the ideas they can submit to the CCC and local government units to help them develop into better proposals,” Cuenca said.

He added that the CCC has received over 140 proposals from local government units.

Climate financing from the national government has also increased from 5.77 percent of the national budget last year to 8.82 percent this year. Cuenca said the climate fund is set to grow to 9.42 percent next year before expanding to 9.42 percent in 2028.

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