FILIPINO cyclists and environmental workers participated in this year’s second Pedal for People and Planet (PPP) to "create awareness on climate change and mobilize citizens to urge governments and corporations to take urgent and ambitious climate action."
“We need real solutions to the climate crisis. Rich countries have to do their fair share of global climate action. This means delivering on their fair share towards reaching zero global emissions and fulfilling their obligations to provide climate finance,” said Lidy Nacpil, PPP organizer and coordinator of Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development (APMDD).
On Sunday, June 4, 2023, some 1,000 bikers joined the 16-kilometer loop ride from Quezon City Hall, as part of the Asia-wide campaign for a clean source of energy.
Bike rides were also held in 42 cities and provinces in Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Nepal, Vietnam and other parts of the Philippines.
“It is the rich, industrialized countries that are responsible for the bulk of historical and continuing emissions that cause global warming and climate change. Their promises and action plans remain short of what they must do to arrest global warming and prevent climate catastrophe,” said Nacpil in a statement.
The bike ride, the seventh since 2021, was held in time for the celebration of World Environment Day on June 5 and the start of the Intersessional Meetings of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) taking place in Bonn, Germany from June 5-15, according to the PPP organizers.
"The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change specifies that developed country governments must provide climate finance to developing countries in recognition that developed countries have contributed the most to the problem of climate change. Developed countries pledged in 2009 to jointly mobilize $100 billion annually in climate finance by 2020 but failed to meet the goal," APMDD said.
Meanwhile, Oyette Zacate, of the Philippine Movement for Climate Justice (PMCJ), maintained that the said 100-billion goal "is extremely small considering the huge amount of climate finance needed by developing countries by 2030 in order to cut emissions, boost resilience, deal with damage from climate change and restore nature and land."
Citing a report commissioned for the COP27 climate summit, APMDD said the total annual investment requirement of developing countries would hit $2.4 trillion by 2030.
"Research finds that rich industrialized countries, big oil corporations, and billionaires with substantial financial investments in carbon-emitting companies are responsible for climate change. Some 23 rich industrialized countries are responsible for 50 percent of all historical emissions and 125 billionaires are each responsible for one million times more greenhouse gas emissions than the average person," APMDD said.
"Last week, a new study described the human cost of failing to tackle the climate emergency. With the world on track for 2.7C of warming given current action plans, it is estimated that global warming will drive billions of people out of the 'climate niche' in which humanity has flourished for millennia. This would mean 2 billion people experiencing average annual temperatures above 29C by 2030, a level at which very few communities have lived in the past. However, urgent action to lower carbon emissions and keep global temperature rise to 1.5C would cut the number of people pushed outside the climate niche by 80 percent, to 400 million," it added.