The victory of US President-elect Joe Biden is a “very positive” development for the Philippines, an economist-lawmaker said.
“On the whole, very positive po for the Philippines, especially [in] the pandemic,” said House ways and means committee chair Joey Salceda of Albay.
In terms of COVID-19 response, Salceda sees a “global collaboration” initiated by the US with other countries that could spur equitable access to vaccine distribution.
“You need a global cooperation framework to ensure that poor countries like the Philippines would have access to the vaccine,” Salceda said.
“I’m sure that [Biden] would be more globalist than ‘America First.’ So he would defend friends, allies, to restore a lot of this relationship that has been fractured over the past four years because the former president took a very, ‘solo-ist’ approach,” he added.
As a country prone to tropical cyclones, the Philippines also benefit from the Paris Agreement, as it includes commitments from member countries to reduce their emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change.
“For the Philippines, we account for less than a fraction of all the global emission but the three strongest typhoons in history all went to the Philippines — Typhoon Goni, Typhoon Meranti and Haiyan — they all went to the Philippines, and we hardly contribute to the carbon emission.”
