According to data from the Philippine National Statistical Agency (PSA), environmental protection spending in 2021 decreased by 4.6% compared to the previous year.
The government’s annual environmental protection spending fell from $26.6 billion in 2020 to $25.4 billion last year, according to Component 6 of the National Statistical Office’s Compendium of Environmental Statistics in the Philippines (CPES).
Adopting the Environmental Statistics Development Framework developed by the United Nations, CPES is a compilation of statistical data collected by several government agencies. It consists of data on expenditures, regulations and other activities, such as international agreements focused on environmental protection and resource management.
Spending on biodiversity and landscape protection increased by 9.7% last year to pesos 11.5 billion. It accounted for 45.1% of total environmental protection spending.
It was followed by environmental protection, not elsewhere classified, at £6.5 billion (25.7% of total spending). Compared to 2020, expenditure allocated to this sector decreased by 4.8%.
On the other hand, waste management costs amounted to 3.3 billion pesos, or 13% of the total expenditure. Allocations to this sector decreased by 13.7% in 2021 from P3.8 billion in 2020.
Meanwhile, spending on pollution reduction amounted to P2.8 billion and research and development environmental protection spending reached P1.2 billion. This will account for 11% and 4.9% of total environmental protection spending in 2021, respectively.
Wastewater management accounted for the lowest percentage of environmental protection spending at 0.3%, or pesos 80 million in total. This is a decrease of 96.3% from 2.2 billion pesos in 2020.
The CPES also found that the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources’ annual budget for 2021 amounted to P18 billion, 4.8% lower than the budget allocated for 2020.
The number of employees or positions per botanical garden was found to have 16,379 employee positions in 2021, compared to 16,354 employees in 2020.
youth interest
Meanwhile, among the Philippine standard education classification programs, environmental science recorded the highest number of students in the country with 57,876 students, followed by forestry (57,073) and environmental planning/management (14,080).
Other programs included Environmental and Sanitary Engineering with an enrollment of 10,624 students. environmental and natural resource management (1,735); environmental education (115); and conservation of natural resources (7).
These figures are based on submissions from higher education institutions, ranging from pre-bachelor degrees to doctoral degrees, submitted to the Higher Education Commission.
The environmental education budget last year was 1.9 million pesos, up 1.8% from 1.86 million pesos in 2020.
Reduce climate change spending
CPES also provided data on climate change spending by the National Climate Change Action Plan (NCCAP). Total climate change expenditures amounted to P181.9 billion, with adaptation costs P173.6 billion and mitigation costs P8.3 billion.
Spending on climate change fell 21.9% from pesos 232.8 billion last year.
When broken down, according to NCCAP’s Strategic Priorities, water scarcity was the largest spender, totaling $132.3 billion, down 8.3% from $144.3 billion in the prior year.
It was followed by food security at 22.4 billion pesos. sustainable energy (P12.4 billion); Ecosystem and environmental stability (P0.4 billion); Climate smart industries and services (P2.7 billion); Knowledge and competency development (P881.9 million); human security (P693.8 million); and cross cleavage (P28 million).
The PSA noted that 18 of the 50 identified metrics were currently collected for CPES component 6. — Abigail Marie P. Iraola