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Climate change, natural disasters and PPPs

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Phoenix concluded a 21-month technical assistance with the PPP Center of the Philippines in early June. The objective of this assistance was to design with the PPP Center and implement the tools needed to better take into account the country’s exposure to climate change and natural disasters in the preparation and management of PPPs. Four priority sectors were designated: water and sanitation, solid waste management, renewable energy and urban transport. The Philippines is one of the 4 countries in the world most exposed to natural disasters and climate change. Events are increasingly violent and destructive. Residents are well aware of this situation: surveys indicate that 94% of the population considers that climate change will have a significant or important impact on their lives. For their part, public policies took this aspect into account very early on by promulgating a “Climate Change Act” in 2009, by endorsing the Paris Agreements in 2015 and by setting up a “Climate Change Commission” to manage these risks. In the national policy for the development of public infrastructure, a major axis of the “Ambisyon Natin 2040” strategy, the private sector is encouraged to contribute to the financing and management of infrastructure within the framework of PPPs, relying on a dynamic entrepreneurial network. The PPP Center is the government agency in charge of promoting, designing, preparing and monitoring PPPs. A guide (“Toolkit”) to take into account considerations related to climate change and natural disasters was developed in 2022 by the PPP Center with the support of the Asian Development Bank. The purpose of the technical assistance provided by Phoenix to the PPP Center, with the support of the French Development Agency, is to make the guidelines of this Toolkit directly operational and “binding”. Phoenix’s intervention consisted of:

  • Providing legal support to the PPP Center to integrate climate change and natural hazard considerations into the new PPP Act currently being drafted;
  • Developing a set of standard contractual clauses to be included in the various PPP project documents;
  • Developing “CCDR Screening Tools”, for each sector, designed to identify project risks and vulnerabilities and propose adaptation measures and minimum performance standards to be included in project documents;
  • Developing “Affordability Tools”, for each sector, designed to assess the carbon footprint of projects, identify mitigation measures and measure the climate and financial impact of their implementation ;
  • Assisting the PPP Center in the evaluation of 10 concrete projects, submitted to the PPP Center by local governments or central administrations, in each of the sectors concerned using the tools developed;
  • Conducting several training sessions on climate change and the issue of its consideration in PPP projects and on the use of the tools.

The 2-day national workshop held in Manila on May 27-28, 2024 was an opportunity to disseminate the tools developed to more than 150 public and private stakeholders.

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