Multilateral financier World Bank has urged the government to give incentives for investments in climate smart agriculture, renewable energy (RE) and to tap ESG (environmental, social, governance) bonds to finance climate actions countering disasters. Presenting its Country Climate and Development Report (CCDR) 2022 in a forum of the Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture (SEARCA), World Bank officials stressed that a government has to raise access of climate financing to private sector. That along with making investment policies for climate action attractive and encouraging access particularly to ESG bonds.
“Public and private investments are needed to finance adaptation through climate-resilient infrastructure. Financing mitigation measures from private sector should be incentivized by new regulatory technology-push and demand-pull policies,” said Souleymane Coulibaly, World Bank project leader and lead economist, at the SEARCA forum.
On the private side, he said, issuing ESG bonds under the recently introduced Sustainability Financing Framework could leverage private financing for climate actions. ESG bonds are generally part of sustainability financing supported by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas. Eligible for ESG bonds bonds are green expenditures such as clean transportation, climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction projects, sustainable agriculture, and renewable energy (solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, hydropower).
Dr. Stefano Pagiola, World Bank senior environmental economist, also said at the SEARCA forum that attractiveness to farmers of climate smart agriculture practices should be improved as these have triple wins. These are higher productivity, higher resilience, and lower greenhouse gas emissions. The WB also identified some policies that must be avoided.
This include a policy for farmers not to pay for water does not give farmers incentives to use water efficiently. In Luzon and Cordillera, a technology that may have higher financial return for farmers is the use of blight resistant white potatoes in crop rotation with green cabbage and rainwater harvesting. Financial return is estimated at more than P500,000 per hectare. In Visayas and Cordillera, another technology with good financial return is rice-onion crop rotation with the use of early maturing rice. Dr. Glenn B. Gregorio, SEARCA director, said that talks on climate policies are now so critical. He himself has been immersed since 1986 in developing adaptation solutions to climate challenge.
“Sustainable Development Goal 13 for climate action is close to my heart. I have been a plant breeder for abiotic stresses, (developing rice) for drought tolerance, submergence tolerance, and salt tolerance,” said Gregorio. Also, climate change adaptation techniques in agriculture enable crops to withstand increasing temperature from global warming and receding rainfall. Gregorio stressed collaboration with the academe and industries are important in to promote sustainable practices.