Capacity building activities on just transition finance for key strategic partners in the financial ecosystem in the Philippines

The Philippines' energy transition plan charts a pathway toward reducing fossil fuel dependency, expanding the share of renewable energy sources, promoting energy efficiency, scaling up electric vehicle adoption, and building resilient, climate-proof infrastructure. This transformation has implications across multiple sectors, including transport, industry, energy, and agriculture.

Financing this transition to a low-carbon and climate-resilient economy requires substantial investment and the mobilization of private capital. The corporate and financial sectors play a central role in enabling a transition that is not only green but also inclusive and just.

In support of this agenda, as the country is actively implementing its Sustainable Finance Framework and Roadmap, in 2024 the ILO’s Social Finance Programme, in collaboration with the ILO Country Office for the Philippines and with financial support from the European Union under the Trade for Decent Work project, launched a six-month capacity-building programme on Just Transition Finance. The initiative aimed to equip financial sector stakeholders with the knowledge and tools to better integrate just transition principles into their banking, underwriting, and investment activities.

Partnering with the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas and the Bankers Association of the Philippines, the programme combined analytical research, targeted stakeholder engagement and capacity development activities. Key activities included:

• An assessment of climate transition dynamics in the Philippines to identify the most affected sectors and economic activities, related social impacts, and nationally driven just transition priorities complemented by a mapping of financial sector actors serving these affected sectors, public incentive mechanisms, and private sector financing needs and gaps associated with a just transition.
• Targeted capacity-building workshop engaging key stakeholders within the financial sector ecosystem aiming to strengthen understanding of the sector’s potential contribution to the national just transition agenda, identify opportunities and means for facilitating and financing a transition that promotes social equity and inclusion, highlight local just transition-related financing.
• Technical assistance to four major financial institutions, including development of tailored action plans for integrating relevant just transition considerations in the financial institutions’ strategies, operations, product offerings.