Philippines

Critically Insufficient4°C+ World

NDCs with this rating fall well outside of a country’s “fair share” range and are not at all consistent with holding warming to below 2°C let alone with the Paris Agreement’s stronger 1.5°C limit. If all government NDCs were in this range, warming would exceed 4°C.

Highly insufficient< 4°C World

NDCs with this rating fall outside of a country’s “fair share” range and are not at all consistent with holding warming to below 2°C let alone with the Paris Agreement’s stronger 1.5°C limit. If all government NDCs were in this range, warming would reach between 3°C and 4°C.

Insufficient< 3°C World

NDCs with this rating are in the least stringent part of a country’s “fair share” range and not consistent with holding warming below 2°C let alone with the Paris Agreement’s stronger 1.5°C limit. If all government NDCs were in this range, warming would reach over 2°C and up to 3°C.

2°C Compatible< 2°C World

NDCs with this rating are consistent with the 2009 Copenhagen 2°C goal and therefore fall within a country’s “fair share” range, but are not fully consistent with the Paris Agreement long term temperature goal. If all government NDCs were in this range, warming could be held below, but not well below, 2°C and still be too high to be consistent with the Paris Agreement 1.5°C limit.

1.5°C Paris Agreement Compatible< 1.5°C World

This rating indicates that a government’s NDCs in the most stringent part of its “fair share” range: it is consistent with the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C limit.

Role model<< 1.5°C World

This rating indicates that a government’s NDC is more ambitious than what is considered a “fair” contribution: it is more than consistent with the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C limit.

We rate the Philippines “2°C compatible.” The “2°C compatible” rating indicates that the Philippines’ climate commitment in 2030 is within the range of what is considered to be a fair share of global effort but is not consistent with the Paris Agreement. This approach requires other countries to make deeper reductions and comparably greater effort to limit warming to 1.5°C.

If all countries were to follow the Philippines’ approach, warming could be held below—but not well below—2°C, and hence would still be too high to be consistent with the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C temperature limit, a threshold the Philippines strongly fought for in 2015 during the Paris negotiations. The 2°C compatible category refers to the 2°C goal adopted by the Copenhagen Agreement in 2009, now replaced by the 1.5°C limit in the Paris Agreement, providing a historical reference point and bridge to the Paris Agreement compatible category rating.

Our rating of the Philippines’ NDC is based on its conditional commitment of reducing GHG emissions by 70% below business as usual (BAU) levels by 2030. The Philippines’ business as usual (BAU) scenario, against which the target is measured, has not yet been published as of December 2018. The Philippines has provided a more detailed description of the NDC targets during the preparation of their NDC, but it still does not provide a BAU for sectoral emissions, which makes sectoral contribution to achieving the targets unclear. For the quantification of the conditional NDC target, we thus apply the reduction target to the BAU as estimated by CAT and assume that emissions excluding LULUCF would also be reduced by 70% below a BAU.

The conditional NDC target falls into the “1.5°C compatible” category. Given the conditional nature of the NDC target, we downgrade the target by one category to “2°C compatible.” If the Philippines’ tentative NDC would be submitted, we would downgrade the rating to “Insufficient”. This target would fall into the “2°C compatible” category and be downgraded to “Insufficient” (assuming the tentative NDC target is also conditional).

If the CAT were to rate the Philippines’ projected emissions levels in 2030 under current policies, the Philippines would also be rated “2°C compatible.”

Further information about the risks and impacts associated with the temperature levels of each of the categories.