Addressing increasingly interconnected climate risks. Participants from government agencies, development institutions, academia, local governments, civil society, and the private sector convened in technical consultation on the development of the Technology Needs Assessment (TNA) for the Philippines.

QUEZON CITY — The Climate Change Commission (CCC) underscored that innovation and technological discussions, and institutional coordination, are crucial to advancing climate resilience and low-carbon development during the Technical Consultation on the Development of the Technology Needs Assessment (TNA) for the Philippines held in Quezon City.

In his message, CCC Vice Chairperson and Executive Director Robert E.A. Borje emphasized that climate governance today requires more integrated, anticipatory, and science-based approaches as climate risks increase across systems and sectors.

“Risks do not simply occur one after another. They cascade across systems, compound existing vulnerabilities, and amplify development pressures. And in many cases, they arrive faster than institutions are able to recover from previous disruptions,” Borje said.

During the consultation, technology was highlighted as a critical enabler of resilience, governance coherence, and sustainable development—affecting how communities survive.

”For developing countries like the Philippines, technology is not a peripheral issue in climate governance,” Borje said. “It affects agricultural productivity and food security, shapes energy transition pathways and industrial competitiveness, and strengthens forecasting systems, early warning capacities, infrastructure resilience, water security, disaster preparedness, and local adaptation planning,” he added.

The TNA is anchored in Article 4.5 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which facilitates environmentally sound technologies for developing countries, and Article 10 of the Paris Agreement, which recognizes technology development and transfer as critical to improving resilience and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The TNA process helps countries identify and prioritize technologies aligned with national development and climate priorities.

The Philippines completed its first TNA in 2018, which identified mitigation priorities in the energy, transport, and waste sectors.

The ongoing TNA Phase V builds on these earlier efforts and supports the implementation of the country’s comprehensive, science‑based blueprints such as the Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), National Adaptation Plan (NAP), Long-Term Strategy (LTS), and emerging Just Transition framework.

Borje noted that the Philippines has already strengthened its climate policy architecture through the submission of its first NDC in 2021, the development of the NDC Implementation Plan in 2023, and the completion of the NAP 2023–2050 under the leadership of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.

However, he emphasized that the challenge now lies beyond producing climate plans.

“Increasingly, the deeper challenge lies in implementation. In governance coherence. In institutional coordination. In investment alignment. In deployment capacity. And in whether systems can move at the scale and speed that increasingly compounding risks now demand,” Borje further explained.

The two-day consultation featured technical discussions and breakout workshops focused on identifying and prioritizing technologies for climate mitigation and adaptation across sectors including agriculture, energy, transport, waste, and industrial processes.

Expected outputs include a portfolio of shortlisted technologies for climate mitigation and adaptation that will inform the preparation of the Philippines’ updated TNA reports.

The consultation gathered various stakeholders from government agencies, academia, research institutions, civil society, and the private sector to identify and prioritize climate technologies aligned with the country’s mitigation and adaptation goals.

The CCC reaffirms that technical consultations such as the TNA are essential in ensuring that climate action remains evidence-based, coordinated, and responsive to the realities faced by vulnerable communities.

These efforts aim not only to perform the whole-of-government approach alone, but also to highlight that the TNA pursues an economy-wide and whole-of-society approach to ensure collective resolve in addressing increasingly interconnected climate risks.