By Greenpeace Philippines campaigner Virginia Llorin
Marking 12 years since super typhoon Yolanda’s first landfall on 2013 and as typhoon Tino (Kalmaegi) left Visayas battered this week, Greenpeace Philippines urged government to put justice over profit: urgently fill the Loss and Damage Fund, prioritize the Clima Bill and hold climate-polluting corporations to account.
Yolanda changed the world on Nov. 8, 2013. Twelve years on, many families in Eastern Samar and across the Visayas still live with the scars. And this week, typhoon Tino is a painful reminder that the storms have never stopped and that millions of Filipinos are forced into unjust cycles of disaster, mourning, struggle and barely recovering before the next one hits.
The root problem is greed. The unchecked greed and the impunity of fossil fuel corporations which have knowingly fueled the climate crisis for profit, as well as corruption by public servants and unscrupulous contractors who have stolen life-saving climate funds.
We once again urge the President to act decisively: end this system of impunity and corruption and to stand with Filipino communities in the fight for climate justice.
Internationally, at COP30 (the 30th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change), urgently demand for rich nations to fill the Loss and Damage Fund with grant-based finance that reaches communities fast; urge the parties to seek other sources of loss and damage funding, such as from the world’s carbon majors — companies that continue to pollute despite decades of knowledge about their climate harms.
Nationally, his administration and this government must prioritize the Clima Bill so the biggest polluters pay and climate finance actually flows to fisherfolk, farmers and coastal barangays. Additionally, his administration must stop new fossil fuel expansion, protect mangroves and reefs, strengthen early warning and evacuation and guarantee transparency so every peso intended for resilience reaches the people.
President Marcos, it has been more than a decade. End the profiteering that drives this crisis and defend the lives and dignity of climate-impacted Filipinos.