NEW YORK, 23 March – Ambassador Irene Susan Natividad, Chargé d’affaires of the Philippine Mission to the United Nations deposits the Philippines’ Instrument of Accession to the Paris Agreement on climate change with Ms. Arancha Hinojal of the United Nations Treaty Section. The Philippines becomes the 138th state party to the Agreement. It will enter into force for the Philippines on Earth Day, 22 April 2017, a year after the country signed the Agreement at the High-Level Signature Ceremony held at the United Nations Headquarters, New York. The Paris Agreement’s central aim is to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change by keeping a global temperature rise this century well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees Celsius. END