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’ NDC “2°C compatible”. The “2°C compatible” rating indicates that the Philippine’s 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 (Zahra Hirji, 2017).

Our rating of the Philippines is based on its conditional NDC of reducing GHG emissions by 70% below business-as-usual (BAU) levels by 2030. The Philippines’ BAU scenario, against which the NDC is to be measured, has not yet been published as of November 2020. 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. Reports indicate that LULUCF would be responsible for 40% of the emissions reductions proposed in the NDC (Department of Environmental and Natural Resources, 2016). However, without the BAU and the sector emissions’ share, it was impossible to separate the contribution from LULUCF.

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.” Including an unconditional target would be an important aspect of scaling up ambition.

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.