Bill establishing legal framework for climate accountability filed in Senate

A bill seeking to establish a legal framework for climate loss and damage accountability has been filed in the House of Representatives.

House Bill 9609 or the Climate Accountability (CLIMA) Act was filed a week before the UN Climate Change Conference (COP28) in Dubai. 

The proposed measure seeks to institute policies and systems to address climate change, protect communities from climate change-induced losses, damages, and human rights harms, and provide mechanisms for accountability and reparations from those responsible for worsening the climate crisis, including corporate interests such as the fossil fuel industry.

Once passed into law, it will provide the framework for limiting fossil fuel expansion and aligning their businesses with the Paris Agreement. 

It will also help facilitate the payment of climate reparations to impacted communities through the establishment of a loss and damage fund.

The passage of the measure was lauded by environmental groups such as Greenpeace Philippines and Legal Rights and Natural Resources Center (LRC) considering that it is a first measure that opens up the possibility for corporate climate accountability to be recognized by a state, and that provides measures to call for reparations mechanisms.

The said organizations deemed this as a priority measure as they noted that climate impacts continue to increase in severity.

“This is a welcome development but this is just the start. We must ensure that policies such as this are passed swiftly through Congress and not be watered down by corporate interests,” said Greenpeace campaigner Jefferson Chua. 

“We are calling on President Marcos Jr. to throw the full support of this administration into making climate accountability a state policy. Beyond this act, however, we are urging the Philippine government to pursue all means available and necessary to hold polluters accountable, and make them pay for their outsized role in the climate crisis,” he added.

For lawyer Ryan Roset of LRC, the bill is “long overdue and a step toward the right direction.” 

“This pioneering pending legislation shifts the burden of the climate crisis to the very entities that cause it, by legislating more stringent due diligence standards on business behavior, and establishing corporate accountability and transparency mechanisms,” Roset said.

“In addition, the CLIMA bill institutionalizes a loss and damage facility to allow communities to access funds for the harms of climate change on human societies and the environment,” he added. — BM, GMA Integrated News