“Global warming has already triggered a sea level rise that could reach from 6 meters to 25 meters.” – Dr. James Hansen
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By 2050, at least 13.6 million Filipinos are at risk of being displaced. Not by war or floods but by sea level rise. That’s according to Addressing Climate Change and Migration in Asia and the Pacific.
The report, published by Asian Development Bank (ADB), considered the Philippines as “one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change.” It ranked the country fifth in terms of number of individuals affected by sea level rise.
And it may already be happening. After doing ocular inspection to the areas affected by Typhoon Carina in Metro Manila, President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. blamed climate change and trash as the culprits of the massive flooding brought by the heavy rains.
Marcos assumed that due to sea level rise caused by climate change, the dikes built throughout the country no longer have the capacity to protect low-lying communities during high tides.
“Governments should not wait to act,” said Bindu Lohani, an ADB official. “By taking steps now, they can reduce vulnerability, strengthen resiliency, and use migration as an adaptation tool rather than let it become an act of desperation.”
There is no way the world can stop the sea level from rising. “The crux of the sea level issue is that it starts very slowly but once it gets going it is practically unstoppable,’’ said Dr. Stefan Rahmstorf, a widely recognized sea level expert from Germany. “There is no way I can see to stop this rise, even if we have gone to zero emissions.’’
By zero emissions, he was referring to greenhouse gases (GHGs) or those gases that have the property of absorbing infrared radiation emitted from Earth’s surface and reradiating it back to Earth’s surface. Examples of GHGs are carbon dioxide, methane, and surface level ozone.
“Climate change is for real,” said Rajendra K. Pachauri, the 2002 to 2015 chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) during the fourth and fifth assessment cycles. “We have just a small window of opportunity and it is closing rather rapidly. There is not a moment to lose.”
Despite this fact, there are still so many who don’t believe in climate change. “I do not know that there are so many who don’t believe in climate change,” Dr. Lourdes Tibig told a group of environmental journalists during a media briefing. “They say this climate change we are talking about is a hoax. Because they say the climate has been changing through the millennia.”
That’s true, said Dr. Tibig, a meteorologist and climatologist and a member of the Climate Change Commission’s National Panel of Technical Experts. “Climate has been changing since the start up to now because of natural causes such as changes in the sun’s intensity, earth’s change in orbit as it revolves around the sun.”
The highlights of the most recent IPCC assessment reports have already ended. “We finished the assessment in 2023,” Dr. Tibig said. “With the publication of the synthesis report, the most important highlights of those findings are one human influence warming the climate at a rate that is unprecedented in at least the last 2000 years.”
The analysis of the country’s climate scientists showed that from 1950 “there has been a slight increase in temperatures, becoming faster as we approach the year 2000.” In 2016, the most recent assessment, it was found that the “temperature increase for the whole globe has reached the point of 1.1 degrees Centigrade.”
It goes without saying that the Philippines is in a precarious position. “We have an average of 20 tropical cyclones within the Philippine Area of Responsibility,” Dr. Tibig reminded. “And with the rainfall associated with tropical cyclones, it almost always leads to river floods. It has already been shown that these events can reduce economic growth of affected countries for more than a decade.”
She cited what happened during the period from 1971 to 2014. She said that across all affected countries, the growth losses from severe tropical cyclones and river floods may have accumulated to 6.5% and 5.0%, respectively, over 15 years.
“That is from 1971 to 2014. I would expect that the data, the statistics from the years 2050 to current, when you’re talking of impacts in terms of impacts of tropical cyclones and river floods, it would be much worse than this,” Dr. Tibig reiterated.
As an archipelago, the Philippines has about 7,641 islands. Only about 2,000 islands are inhabited, and more than 5,000 are yet to be officially named. With a coastline of 18,000 kilometers, the Philippines is very vulnerable to sea level rise.
“We have low-lying islands, which we are afraid are going to be underwater permanently once we reach the point of global warming of 1.5,” Dr. Tibig forecasted. “And sea level rise actually results from the melting of the sea ice cover, including ice sheets and glaciers in the polar regions. Because in the polar regions, temperature increases can sometimes be as much as 40 degrees centigrade. So that ice melts actually at zero degrees.”
Once the temperature plunges to change, rather, goes up to more than zero degrees, melting becomes faster. “So, the melting of these glaciers in the polar regions adds to the thermal expansion of the seas and oceans as this warms up,” Dr. Tibig said, adding that sea level rise in the country has been observed to be higher than the global rate – especially during the period of 1993 to 2015.
The country’s weather bureau said that between now and 2100, sea level rise in the country would be at an average of 0.2 meter by the end of the 21st century. But climate scientists contend it’s much worse than that. “Because when projections for sea level rise are done, it depends, the findings will depend on which of these components are included in the modelling,” Dr. Tibig said.
