A few days before President Rodrigo Duterte delivered his third State of the Nation Address (SONA), Environment Secretary Roy A. Cimatu said the current administration will continue to take decisive steps to protect citizens from the threats posed by climate change and natural disasters.
“There will be no let-up in the fight against climate change and disaster risks as the government will do everything to protect the public from their immediate threats,” Cimatu said.
As early as 2009, the World Bank warned that the Philippines topped the list of countries most vulnerable to storms, with Vietnam the second most vulnerable to rising sea levels, and Thailand and Vietnam among those most threatened by flooding.
Last year, the Global Climate Risk Index of German Watch listed four out of the 10 members of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The four countries singled out as most affected by climate change from 1995 to 2014 based on annual averages were Myanmar, the Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand.
During the ASEAN Forum on Urban Resilience to Climate Change and Disaster Risk Reduction Management Strategies held in Laoag City, Cimatu urged the member-countries to take the threat very seriously. “Climate change is chaos. We don’t know when the worst will happen. We need unity, convergence and synergy in our actions,” he pointed out.
It was Dr. James E. Hansen of the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration who first raised the problem of climate change. In 1988, he told an American Senate hearing that the greenhouse effect “is changing our climate now.”
The greenhouse effect is a natural warming process. According to Dr. Perez, carbon dioxide and certain other gases are always present in the atmosphere. These gases create a warming effect that has some similarity to the warming inside a greenhouse, hence the name “greenhouse effect.”
Here’s what happens, according to a Worldwatch article: “Visible sunlight passes through the atmosphere without being absorbed; some are back-scattered. Some of the sunlight striking the earth is absorbed and converted to heat, which warms the surface. The surface emits heat to the atmosphere, where some of it is absorbed by greenhouse gases and reemitted toward the surface. Some of the heat is not trapped by greenhouse gases and escapes into space.”
Dr. Rosa Perez, a research fellow of the Manila Observatory and one of the scientists who contributed to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a United Nations body which became a co-recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, says that human activities that emit additional greenhouse gases to the atmosphere increase the amount of heat that gets absorbed before escaping to space, thus enhancing the greenhouse effect and amplifying the warming of the earth.
“Although the Earth’s climate has changed many times throughout its history, the rapid warming seen today cannot be explained by natural processes alone,” points out Dr. Perez, who has a doctoral degree in meteorology from the University of the Philippines.
“Climate change is very simple,” explained Dr. Robert Watson, a British chemist who has worked on atmospheric science issues. “We are increasing emissions of greenhouse gases and thus their concentrations in the atmosphere are going up. As these concentrations increase, the temperature of the earth rises.
Examples of greenhouse gases are: water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide. There are also those man-made gases generated during industrial processes like sulfur hexafluoride, hydrofluorocarbons, and perfluorocarbons.
“Our lifestyle has led to the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere,” notes the fact sheet circulated during climate change workshop held in Davao City. “These gases trap heat from the sun, making the earth warmer. Manifestations of a warmer world include rising mean temperatures, sea level rise and increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events like droughts and greater rainfall.”
“Continued emission of greenhouse gases will cause further warming and long-lasting changes in all components of the climate system, increasing the likelihood of severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems,” said the IPCC report.
Dr. Perez says that the current carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere is about 40% more than pre-industrial levels. “We are emitting a lot of carbon dioxide faster than the Earth can absorb any excess,” she deplores.
The Philippines is one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change, said Dr. Rodel D. Lasco, another IPCC member from the Philippines. For one, the country “has a long coastline where millions of people live including in urban centers such as Metro Manila, Cebu, and Davao.”
Sea level rise within this century will affect a larger percentage of the Philippine coastline compared with that of other developing countries of Asia and the Pacific region, according to a World Bank report.
Dr. Perez said the sea level that has been projected in the study for the year 2100 would have risen by 0.3 meter and 1 meter to represent the low and high estimates and 2 meters for the worst-case scenario.
All of Cavite, she pointed out, will see a sea level rise of at least 30 centimeters. With every meter that it gains, the sea goes at least three kilometers inlands, she added. The sea will literally rise to flood the plains.
A study conducted by the Philippine Country Study to Address Climate Change some years back showed that the Manila Bay is already subjected to several hazards, including flooding and storm surges.
“Shoreline changes due to reclamation for housing, ports, coastal roads, buildings and other urbanized development are high, adding to an increased threat of inundation,” the study said.
Health scientists pointed out that should earth’s thermostat continues to rise, human health problems will also become more frequent and severe. “The warming of the planet will be gradual, but the effects of extreme weather events will be abrupt and acutely felt,” said Dr. Margaret Chan when she was still the head of the World Health Organization. “Both trends can affect some of the most fundamental determinants of health: air, water, food, shelter and freedom from disease.”
Dr. Paul Epstein, in a recent study entitled Human Health and Climate Change, echoes the same concern: “Climate change will have wide-ranging and mostly damaging impacts on human health. There have been periods of uncontrollable waves of disease that radically altered human civilization in the past, such as when Europe’s population was devastated by bubonic plague in the Middle Ages. That problem was associated with population growth and urbanization.”
But what is more alarming is that climate change will greatly affect food production. It has been estimated by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) that up to 25% of world food production could be lost by 2050 as a result of climate change, water scarcity and land degradation.
“Climate change is more disastrous to the agricultural industry of the Philippines and its neighboring countries than in other parts of the world,” warned Dr. David Street of the US Argonne National Laboratory.
Take the case of rice, the staple food of Filipinos. The Laguna-based International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) reported that climate change could reduce rice yields. Although its study showed that rice could benefit from higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, an increase in temperature would “nullify any yield increase.”
According to the Philippine Council for Agriculture, Forestry and Natural Resources Research and Development, about 5-7 percent decline in yield of major crops in the Philippines is attributed to climate change. “The yield reduction is caused by heat stress, decrease in sink formation, shortening of growing period, and increased maintenance for respiration,” said the line agency of the Department of Science and Technology.
Water resources are also vulnerable to climate change. “In a warmer world, we will need more water – to drink and to irrigate crops,” said the London-based Panos Institute. “Water for agriculture is critical for food security,” points out Mark W. Rosegrant, a senior research fellow at the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute.
“The link between water and food is strong,” says Lester R. Brown, president of Earth Policy Institute, also based in Washington, D.C. “We drink, in one form or another, nearly 4 liters of water per day. But the food we consume each day requires at least 2,000 liters to produce, 500 times as much.”
As a country vulnerable to climate change, we need to do something about it now. As Senator Loren Legarda said: “While adaptation is our priority since we are highly vulnerable to climate risks, we should also strive to mitigate or reduce our carbon emissions as part of our aim to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
“Our efforts will be to mitigate as we adapt: mitigation as a function of adaptation. For instance, as we plant and rehabilitate our forests to increase our carbon sink, we also help reduce disaster risks, since forests serve as natural buffer against landslides, storm surge and tsunami. We should also start transitioning to a low carbon economy not only by promoting renewable energy sources but also through energy conservation,” she added.
