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Press
Release: ScienceNewsPhilippines
The battle
to slow down climate change will be fought where it matters most, on the
ground.
Communities
will lead initiatives and put in place sound policies that will curtail the
effects of climate change in their locales, said Dr. Gil C. Saguiguit Jr.,
Director of the Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research
in Agriculture (SEARCA).
“The battle
for climate change is either won or lost in the grassroots level where
localized interventions will play a big role,” he said during a
training-workshop on Environmental Leadership in Climate Change Adaptation
convened by SEARCA and the Department of Agriculture-Bureau of Agricultural
Research (DA-BAR).
Community
leaders need to strengthen their capacity in the struggle to adopt and address
climate change that impacts on food and agriculture, he said
“Agriculture
is highly vulnerable and affected by the impacts of climate change,” he said
during the workshop aimed at training community leaders to act as catalysts in
ensuring the country’s resiliency to climate change.
The Climate
Change Adaptation and Mitigation Program, or CchAMP, is a SEARCA flagship program. Information exchange on
adaptation practices and technologies are continuously disseminated through
SEARCA's Knowledge Center on Climate Change or KC3.
The SEARCA
and and DA-BAR initiative is part of the Capacity Building on Responding to
Climate Change through Research and Development in Agriculture program.
Laboratory
findings at the International Rice Research Institute show that for every 1
degree Celcius increase in temperature, a 15 percent reduction in rice yields
follow, said Commisioner Yeb Saño of the Climate Change Commission during the
workshop.
By 2020,
the average temperature in the Philippines will breach this 1 degree increase,
anywhere from .9 to 1.2 degrees C, he
said.
By 2050,
average temperature will be 2 degrees hotter than what is currently normal:
about 32 degrees C. By 2100, it will be 3.4 degrees C above the current
temperature, Saño said.
The impact
on rice “is simple arithmetic,” he said, pointing out that a 3 degrees C
increase means a 45 percent reduction in rice harvests. “That's a reduction of
almost half of what would be available for food.”
That
failure is caused by temperature alone, he said. “We are not speaking yet of
extreme weather like more frequent and stronger typhoons, sea level rise and
salt water intrusion.”
Based on
global computer models, the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and
Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa) projects that the rainy season
will be up to 60 percent wetter than now
while the dry season will be 60 percent dryer, Saño said.
In what he
calls “intensified extremes”, the typhoon belt has already shifted from
northern Luzon to the Visayas, including Southern Luzon, Masbate, Romblon,
Boracay, Iloilo and Northern Palawan.
While the
frequency remains the same at about 20 typhoons a year, there are now about
five to six of these that are stronger with wind speeds of about 220 kilometers
per hour compared to about two or three
previously. And they bring a lot of rains.
These are
characteristic of climate change as warmer oceans generate stronger storms, he
said. Ocean temperatures of less than 27 degrees C won't generate a typhoon but
the hotter it is, the higher the probability of typhoons.
As it is,
the Western Pacific ocean where most typhoons come from, and even the West
Philippine Sea, average 32 degrees C, so there's the larger possibility of more
storms, Saño said.
During the
2010-2011 El Nino episode, sea surface temperature increased, resulting in
massive coral bleaching in 2011.
“We don't
know if this will persist or if things are happening as part of a natural
cycle,” Saño said.
Still,
these occurences will become more frequent, he said. In what scientists call
return periods, what used to be, for example, a 100-year event could happen
twice or even thrice every 100 years, he added.
The chances
of Ondoy-like typhoons occuring once every century will become more frequent.
“And this will affect the way we design public infrastructure and take into
account return periods that are shorter and design infrastructure like
irrigation with these things in mind, to make them last longer.”
“It puts a
new dimension to everything, dealing with shorter return periods and more
extreme events coupled with problems not at all linked to climate change like
deforestation, poor governance and poor planning,” Saño said. “It's not
business as usual.”
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