The climate bill is due for polluters. Filipinos have paid enough

Javi Benitez is Representative of the 3rd District of Negros Occidental in the House of Representatives of the Philippines.

The climate crisis in the Philippines is not a theory, it is a lived reality. Our dry seasons are harsher, and our wet seasons are more punishing. Typhoon seasons have grown increasingly violent, leaving entire communities struggling to rebuild year after year.

The costs of these disasters are staggering, and they fall unfairly on ordinary Filipinos. Against this backdrop, I have joined five other members of the House of Representatives to advance legislation that shifts the burden away from our people. The Climate Accountability Act, or CLIMA Bill, can be a game-changer.

Super typhoons, some exceeding 300 kilometres per hour, have become more common and more deadly. They inflict permanent injuries and sweep away items with immeasurable value, such as a family photo album or a child’s favourite toy. For many families in the most battered barangays, these losses are not abstract, they are personal and irreplaceable.

Other consequences are fully measurable: soaring medical bills, destroyed public infrastructure, damaged crops, submerged communities, closed offices and schools, polluted waterways, and increased disease outbreaks.

Thanks to advances in attribution science, we can now quantify how much climate change intensifies specific typhoons. Last year’s series of six typhoons striking in just 30 days affected 13 million people and caused over $500 million in economic losses. Climate change made this catastrophe 1.7 times more likely and increased its intensity by 7.2 kilometres per hour.

New research exposes the true scale of the fossil fuel industry’s impact. Emissions released between 2015 and 2025 by just five top investor-owned oil and gas companies are projected to cause over $5 trillion in damages - more than 100 times the Philippine national budget.

Yet the world’s fossil fuel producers have pledged only a fraction of this amount to climate funds meant to address loss and damage, including the one hosted in the Philippines.

I was born 31 years ago, just months after the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change entered into force. Since then, the costs of extreme weather have spiralled. Global progress has been real but painfully slow, and climate change does not pause while governments debate solutions.

As a representative of my people, I cannot remain silent while the world’s biggest polluters earn billions, and ordinary Filipinos pay the price. Our country accounts for less than 0.5% of global emissions, yet year after year, our communities shoulder the losses caused by pollution they did not create.

The CLIMA Bill establishes a reparations fund financed by penalties on oil and gas corporations that exceed acceptable emissions thresholds. These penalties are designed to hold corporations accountable, not to raise costs for Filipino consumers. The fund will help compensate communities for climate-related loss and damage and incentivise cleaner business practices across the industry.

This bill may be the first of its kind in the Global South, but it aligns with growing momentum worldwide. The world’s top court has affirmed that major polluters may be required to pay for climate harm.

Former presidents and prime ministers are calling for permanent fossil fuel taxes. Barbados, France, and Kenya are exploring global levies. The U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres has urged governments to tax fossil fuel profits. More than 270,000 people around the world have joined the Polluters Pay movement.

We are approaching a point where rules designed for a stable climate no longer protect our communities or guarantee even a minimal level of safety and income security. We cannot give up on science, or on justice. Those who destabilise the climate for profit must contribute their fair share to help repair what has been broken.

Filipino people will not give up. What some of us are pushing for in Congress, many of our citizens are demanding in court. Just last month, 67 survivors of Super Typhoon Odette announced their intention to file a case in Britain against a British oil giant for its role in driving the climate crisis.

In a speech on the House floor, I said: “Greed in all forms is our enemy, it is our duty to fight it.”

I now call on my fellow legislators to support the passage of the CLIMA Bill, and I urge policymakers worldwide to use every platform, from COP30 in Belém to negotiations on a U.N. Tax Convention in Nairobi, to make the polluter pays principle as universal as the climate impacts our people face.

Filipinos have paid enough. It is time the world’s biggest polluters do the same.