Philippines loses billions to climate change

 

 

            Climate change impacts have been manifested in the Philippines by extreme weather occurrence such as floods, droughts, forest fires, and an increase in tropical cyclones. These extreme weather events associated with climate change, and the disasters these have wrought, have caused losses amounting to billions of pesos. From 1975 to 2002, tropical cyclones have resulted to losses of 4.578 billion pesos due to damage to property, including damage to agriculture worth 3.047 billion pesos. Drought in Southern Mindanao in 1998, the 2nd hottest year on record, incurred crop losses amounting to 828 million pesos. And damages due to four successive tropical cyclones towards the end of 2004 cost the nation an estimated 7,615.98 million pesos.

        ”The impacts of climate change will be most catastrophic to countries who are the least able to cope,” said Greenpeace Southeast Asia Climate and Energy campaigner Abigail Jabines. “The Philippines will lose billions of pesos to climate change. As it is, this is money that we can ill afford to spare.”

       "There are already a lot of losses, lets not wait for another day to do our small contribution to mitigate the effects of climate change here in the Philippines'

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Climate change impacts and the Philippines

The earth is definitely warming. Signals of a changing climate, including increasing trends in temperature, sea level rise and extreme climate events, are already evident in the Philippines. And as the warming continues, the effects will become more catastrophic.

With climate change will come water shortages and decreases in agricultural productivity and food security. Our health will be threatened by heat stress and increased chances of exposure to infectious diseases. Those living in low-lying coastal areas may become climate refugees as their homes are destroyed. And tourism, an important source of income for many, will decline.

"Every Filipino must be prepared for the on-going changes of our climate"

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Philippines: leading Asia in Climate Change

By BETH DAY ROMULO

Blessed with such alternate clean energy sources as geothermal, hydropower, wind, solar and ocean waves, the Philippines got off to a head start on clean energy by developing geothermal plants in the 1970’s.

But the momentum was not sustained. The cost of bringing in a plant was high, and when oil prices dropped, the program stopped. The Department of Energy’s 10-year plan, which was adopted in 2003, aims to achieve 40 percent self sufficiency in renewable energy and is already at 33 percent, with 22 percent of that from geothermal power.

The Renewable Energy Act of 2008 was the first such legislation in Asia, and paved the way for rapid development of alternate energy sources. Besides cutting back on carbon emissions, it saves on the cost of imported oil, and is an important source of foreign investment. On President Arroyo’s recent trip to Brazil contracts were signed for developing bio-energy and bioethanol plants.

Today a beach in Ilocos Norte is the site of the first and largest wind farm in southeast Asia, built by Danish Northwind Power Development Corporation. The Philippines has a potential of 76,000 megawatts of wind power.

Great Britain has been an investor in energy, and the latest contract by Global Green Power Corp., is to develop three 15-MW biomass plants simultaneously in Panay, Nueva Ecija and Pangasinan which will provide 900 jobs and extra income for local farmers for agricultural waste.

At the forum British Ambassador Peter Beckingham commended the Philippines for tackling Climate Change with its Renewable Energy Law, which supports the goal of 60 percent self-sufficiency from alternate energy sources.

Historically, in the Philippines, an example of “green” architecture is the Philippine “Bahay kubo” a design dictated by the climate, using shade from trees, insulated roofs and cross ventilation. Modern green buildings use natural lighting to avoid electricity, are passively cooled, rather than relying on air conditioning, and collect rainwater to use for flushing toilets. And, like the Bahay Kubo, of the past, they rely on local materials which can be re-cycled.

"Even in the early 1970's Philippines are already on the architecture designs that suits the climate like bahay kubo."

Climate Change Response Framework

This is the Philippine framework for climate change First is mitigation, We have to do our share as part of global community through,
* Climate-friendly energy supply mix
* Policy incentives for renewable energy
* Diverse interventions in:
* Energy Generation
* Energy Efficiency
* Transport/consumer behavior

Adaptation Response Guidelines

* Address vulnerabilities of specific sectors and areas.
* Focus on disaster-prone settlements, high-risk population centers, and food production areas

Financing Interventions

Search for financing mechanisms in support of local and sectoral initiatives.

* ODA funds
* Market-based incentives
* Subsidies targeted at lowering costs for power generation using solar, wind and other clean technologies

Innovative lending schemes

Technology Solutions

* Mitigation: climate-friendly technologies for low-carbon infrastructure for energy, agriculture, industry, transportation and settlements.
* Adaptation: introduce new methods of technologies
* Task Force to facilitate transfer of technology through bilateral, multilateral and regional agreements.

Social Mobilization

Various stakeholders such as:

* Home and Office Builders
* Local Government Officials
* Car Manufacturers
* Mall Owners
* Appliance Makers
* Academe
* Others

Climate Change in The Philippines

According to the Philippine task force for climate change, the Philippines has experienced temperature spikes brought about by climate change. It has been observed that warming is experienced most in the northern and southern regions of the country, while Metro Manila has warmed less than most parts. In addition, the regions that have warmed the most (northern Luzon, Mindanao) have also dried the most. Largest precipitation trends are about 10 percent during the 20th century.

Hot days and hot nights have become more frequent. Extreme weather events have also occurred more frequently since 1980. These include deadly and damaging typhoons, floods, landslides, severe El Niño and La Niña events, drought, and forest fires. Adversely affected sectors include agriculture, fresh water, coastal and marine resources and health.

"The climate is already changing, let us all do our share to adapt if not mitigate the effects of these drastic changes"

Climate change impacts and the Philippines

The earth is definitely warming. Signals of a changing climate, including increasing trends in temperature, sea level rise and extreme climate events, are already evident in the Philippines. And as the warming continues, the effects will become more catastrophic.

With climate change will come water shortages and decreases in agricultural productivity and food security. Our health will be threatened by heat stress and increased chances of exposure to infectious diseases. Those living in low-lying coastal areas may become climate refugees as their homes are destroyed. And tourism, an important source of income for many, will decline.

Climate change will also bring more extreme weather, from floods to droughts, forest fires to tropical cyclones. As extreme climate events increase in strength and frequency, more and more people will risk losing their homes and lives.

"Every Filipino must prepare for this changes."

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What Will The Climate Be Like in 2100?

Stanford University climatologist Stephen Schneider discusses what we know and don’t know about the future of the Earth’s climate, and whether it is worth spending trillions of dollars to fight climate change.

What's the old joke? Prediction is hard, especially about the future. What do you have to do to predict the climate of 2100? Well, you have to know how much CO2, methane, nitrous oxide, aerosols - that's dust and smoke - are going to be there, because that changes what we call the forcing - the pressures on the climate system - to be warmer or colder. We know it's going to be warmer. That's virtually certain.


But you don't know what those are going to be on the basis of any history. There's never been a time before when there was six to ten billion people on the Earth, when they're demanding dramatic increases in their standards of living, and when they're using the cheapest available technology - usually coal and oil burning, big cars - to get there. So, before you can forecast how warm it will be in 2100 - and whether it's worth a trillion-dollar investment not to have that outcome - you've got to know a bunch of social factors.

What kinds of social factors?

How many people are in the world? What standards of living do they have? That's population times GDP per capita - a typical measure of standard of living. Then you have to multiply that by how much energy per unit of GDP they consume. We call that energy intensity. It's critically important. And how do we know if people are going to take this problem seriously?

"It seems that the climate in the next century would really be different, we might not know how different it is."

What Is The Greenhouse Effect?

Our atmosphere is but a tiny layer of gas around a huge bulky planet. But it is this gaseous outer ring and its misleadingly called greenhouse effect that makes life on Earth possible.

The sun is the Earth’s primary energy source, a burning star so hot that we can feel its heat from over 150 million kilometers away. Its rays enter our atmosphere and shower upon on our planet. About one third of this solar energy is reflected back into the universe by shimmering glaciers, water and other bright surfaces. Two thirds, however, are absorbed by the Earth, warming land, oceans, and atmosphere.

Much of this heat radiates back out into space, but some of it is stored in the atmosphere. This process is called the greenhouse effect. Without it, the Earth’s average temperature would be a chilling -18 degrees Celsius, even despite the sun’s constant energy supply.

In a world like this, life on Earth would probably have never emerged from the sea. Thanks to the greenhouse effect, however, heat emitted from the Earth is trapped in the atmosphere, providing us with a comfortable average temperature of 14 degrees.

"Thanks to our thin layer of atmosphere that makes life habitable here on earth."

RP seeks $140 million from G8's $20-billion food production fund

By Marianne V. Go

MANILA, Philippines - The government will seek up to $140 million in funding from the $20-billion Food Production Fund of the Group of Eight (G8) nations for two projects involving food production and climate change.

The first project involves a $120-million joint program to be implemented by the Philippine Rice Research Institute (Philrice) and the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) for the development and distribution of climate-ready seeds.

The second, with a lower funding need of $20 million, is for a joint Philippine-US geographic information system (GIS) and remote sensing project which will allow production planners a smarter way to implement food production, coastal and municipal fisheries and climate change adaptation programs.


The US is now applying a new framework in addressing global food security wherein farm productivity is improved rather than traditionally extending just emergency assistance.

US President Barack Obama and fellow G8 leaders recently unveiled the fund on the last day of their summit in Italy to help feed people in developing countries and extend aid to economies most vulnerable to the global financial crisis.

The G8 is comprised of the US, Canada, UK, France, Germany, Italy , Japan , Russia, as well as the European Union.

Agriculture Secretary Arthur C. Yap relayed the funding request to US Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack last week in Washington.

According to Yap, Philrice and IRRI are presently collaborating on testing and distributing seeds, that are, among others, resistant to the salinity in rice production areas near coastal communities that have been saline-invaded or drought-prone areas that will require 30 percent to 40 percent less water than what regular variety rice plants need.

Yap revealed the project is not proceeding as swiftly as it should since it is currently confined to field trials only.

To accelerate the project’s implementation, Yap said additional funds are required to acquire modern facilities that can undertake stress analysis in controlled conditions.

Meanwhile, the joint RP-US GIS and remote sensing project will allow production planners a smarter way to implement food production, coastal and municipal fisheries and climate change adaptation programs.

Aside from the two projects, Yap and Vilsack also discussed possible investments in the biofuels and biotechnology sectos as well as in food production.

Yap noted, the US appears keen on “using the Philippines as a staging ground for exports to the region for food and bio-technology.”

"The funding could help the Philippines on its combat to adopt on climate change."

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What is Global Warming?

Global Warming is defined as the increase of the average temperature on Earth. As the Earth is getting hotter, disasters like hurricanes, droughts and floods are getting more frequent.

Over the last 100 years, the average temperature of the air near the Earth´s surface has risen a little less than 1° Celsius. Does not seem all that much? It is responsible for the conspicuous increase in storms, floods and raging forest fires we have seen in the last ten years.

Out of the 20 warmest years on record, 19 have occurred since 1980. The three hottest years ever observed have all occurred in the last eight years, even.

But it is not only about how much the Earth is warming, it is also about how fast it is warming. There have always been natural climate changes – Ice Ages and the warm intermediate times between them – but those evolved over periods of 50,000 to 100,000 years.

Scientist were saying that the earth should now be in a cool-down-period.But as what we were observing temperature increase in the most prevalent.

Floods leave 400,000 homeless in Philippine south

MANILA - Floods triggered by heavy monsoon rains have killed at least one dozen people and forced about 400,000 to flee their homes and farms in the southern Philippines, an army spokesman said on Monday.

Troops deployed rubber boats, amphibious vehicles and trucks to evacuate thousands of families marooned in low-lying areas of Mindanao, Colonel Jonathan Ponce told reporters.

"We're praying for the rains to stop and for the water level to subside so these people can go back to their homes," Ponce said, adding floods had destroyed hundreds of houses on riverbanks in Sultan Kudarat town and Cotabato City.

Ponce said floodwaters had risen to about 3-4 metres in some areas, destroying crops and property, due to almost a week of heavy rain. A dozen people had drowned after they were swept away in a swollen river, he added.

Ponce said the floodwaters also affected the marshland areas, where soldiers fought rogue Muslim rebels for nearly a year, displacing nearly 350,000 people since August 2008. Both sides agreed on a truce last month.

Landslides and flash floods are common across the Philippines during the monsoon months from May to November. The country is also usually hit by an average of about 20 typhoons a year but that number may rise due to climate change, officials have said.

"The effects of climate change is very evident in the low lying areas of the Philippines especially the Cotabato - Maguindanao Provinces. According to some of the residents that it was there first time after living for so many years in Cotabato City to experience flood where water entered there houses."

Family planning may help reduce “carbon footprint” of people

WASHINGTON - A study by statisticians at Oregon State University (OSU) in the US has determined that family planning is important to reduce the “carbon footprint” of people.

According to the study, some people who are serious about wanting to reduce their “carbon footprint” on the Earth have one choice available to them that may yield a large long-term benefit - have one less child.

In the US, the carbon legacy and greenhouse gas impact of an extra child is almost 20 times more important than some of the other environmentally sensitive practices people might employ their entire lives - things like driving a high mileage car, recycling, or using energy-efficient appliances and light bulbs.

The research also makes it clear that potential carbon impacts vary dramatically across countries.

The average long-term carbon impact of a child born in the US - along with all of its descendants - is more than 160 times the impact of a child born in Bangladesh.

“In discussions about climate change, we tend to focus on the carbon emissions of an individual over his or her lifetime,” said Paul Murtaugh, an OSU professor of statistics.

“Those are important issues and it’s essential that they should be considered. But, an added challenge facing us is continuing population growth and increasing global consumption of resources,” he added.

In this debate, very little attention has been given to the overwhelming importance of reproductive choice, according to Murtaugh.

When an individual produces a child - and that child potentially produces more descendants in the future - the effect on the environment can be many times the impact produced by a person during their lifetime.

Under current conditions in the US, for instance, each child ultimately adds about 9,441 metric tons of carbon dioxide to the carbon legacy of an average parent - about 5.7 times the lifetime emissions for which, on average, a person is responsible.

The researchers make it clear they are not advocating government controls or intervention on population issues, but say they simply want to make people aware of the environmental consequences of their reproductive choices.

“Many people are unaware of the power of exponential population growth,” Murtaugh said.

“Future growth amplifies the consequences of people’s reproductive choices today, the same way that compound interest amplifies a bank balance,” he added.

"In deed the present trend of over exploitation of the natural resources both renewable and non renewable is caused by the increasing demand of the population"

Renewable energy projects

By Pia Lee-Brago

MANILA, Philippines - The United Kingdom has commended the Philippines for taking steps to tackle climate change with its Renewable Energy (RE) Law which supports the country’s goal of 60 percent energy self-sufficiency by 2010.

British Ambassador Peter Beckingham said the RE Law could open doors for the Philippines to capture part of the more than $70-billion investments in renewable energy development world-wide by providing incentives to investors, equipment manufacturers and suppliers.

Beckingham urged local government units (LGUs) to push for alternative sources of energy for their constituents by opening their municipalities to investors in renewable technologies.

The British Embassy Manila funded a forum held recently attended by municipal mayors from across the nation and representatives of development agencies to build links between local government units (LGUs) and local investors in coastal areas to explore sustainable, low-carbon energy solutions.

Mayor Elmer Codilla of Kananga, Leyte related the economic benefits to his municipality of hosting a number of geothermal plants which provide 40 percent of the power requirement in Luzon.

From 1992 to 2008, Kananga has received over P200 million in royalty shares based on the gross receipts of the Energy Development Corporation, in addition to the millions in annual taxes paid by the operators.

“Such huge revenues and benefits enjoyed by the host LGU has paved the way for the elevation of Kananga, Leyte into a first class municipality. Because of this, the (municipality) has embarked on projects in education, health, agriculture, infrastructure and other priority programs with the use of proceeds from EDC,” Codilla said.

Beckingham added that Britain has taken advantage of the demand for green projects, which opened major opportunities for British businesses to create jobs in the new low-carbon economy.

“This has grown into a £3-trillion market employing nearly 900,000 people in the UK. The Philippines can do the same,” he said.

"The renewable energy law can strengthen our economy and boost our goal of a clean and sustainable environment"