PRESS RELEASE: Progressive Solons File People’s Green New Deal, First in the Developing World

PRESS RELEASE: Progressive Solons File People’s Green New Deal, First in the Developing World

While the whole world is still grappling with the disappointing results of the recently concluded COP26 climate talks, progressive legislators and activists are not wasting any time and have filed House Resolution 2362 before Congress to declare a People’s Green New Deal (PGND)—the first of its kind in Southeast Asia and in the ‘Global South’ developing world.

“The watered down Glasgow climate pact of COP26 has set the world on a pathway to a scorching 2.4C global warming. We need to respond with an emergency People’s Green New Deal to mobilize financing and compensation from polluter nations and corporations historically accountable to our catastrophic climate vulnerability,” said Leon Dulce, national coordinator of Kalikasan People’s Network for the Environment (Kalikasan PNE), a civil society partner of the Makabayan Bloc who filed the resolution.

“The PGND will potentially achieve the restoration of at least 1 million hectares of degraded ecosystems and increase renewable energy share in total installed energy capacity to up to 42% by 2030, exceeding the current lackluster climate targets of the Duterte government,” Dulce explained.

“The pandemic made our social, economic and environmental crises immeasurably worse but the government can take extraordinary measures to fix these if it wanted to — the PGND is a historic step forward to making things right. The PGND will strategically create 10 million green jobs and double the income of the poorest 20 percent of families,” said Sonny Africa, executive director of independent think-tank IBON Foundation, another civil society partner supporting the resolution.

Bayan Muna Representative Carlos Zarate, the principal author of the Deal, said “the distinct feature of our proposed People’s Green New Deal is the establishment of climate justice mechanisms to demand just compensation over the climate debts owed to us by polluter nations and corporations. The PGND also focuses on building and expanding domestic industries based on rational economic planning informed by planetary boundaries and people’s needs.”

The PGND authored by the Makabayan Bloc is the first Green New Deal in the developing world, and features a declaration of an emergency moratorium on destructive and pollutive projects; a just and green recovery program covering aid, renewable energy, agriculture, and national industries; and the fast tracking of policy reform priorities such as the ‘Philippine Greenprint’ bills; and the Environmental Defense Bill.

Green New Deals are massive investment programs aimed at injecting economic stimulus into the transition of industries and livelihoods towards more ecologically conscious and climate-sustainable development pathways. 

The original proposal was a house resolution spearheaded by Alexandra Ocasio Cortez, New York representative in the US Congress. When the COVID-19 crisis struck the world in 2020, proponents pushed for the fast-tracking of the Deal as an emergency stimulus in response to the impacts of the zoonotic pandemic.

According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), only 17 percent of total global spending for COVID-19 economic stimulus was spent on environmentally positive measures. 

In the Philippines, none of the Php2.6 trillion economic stimulus at the government’s disposal last year was spent on green measures.#