THE Philippines is ranked among the countries highly vulnerable to climate change. Out of 184 countries examined on their vulnerability to the negative impacts of climate change, the United Nations ranked the Philippines at 114, clustered among the bottom 60 countries.
This is not surprising given that the country is visited by around 18 to 20 destructive typhoons a year and is located along the “Ring of Fire” belt where volcanic eruptions and earthquakes periodically occur. Expectedly, agriculture bears the brunt of the adverse impacts of climate change.
The National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council has noted that agriculture suffers around P29 billion in damage and losses yearly to natural disasters. According to the Department of Agriculture (DA), our rice farmers experienced the highest damages and losses due to climate-related disasters, particularly the occurrence of destructive typhoons.
The country has recognized the threat of climate change to lives and the economy in general. In 2009, Congress enacted the Climate Change Act, which also provided for the creation of the Climate Change Commission as the lead policymaking body on climate change-related concerns.
The commission formulated the National Framework Strategy on Climate Change (2010-2022) and the National Climate Change Action Plan (2011-2028). These set out to ensure the mainstreaming of climate change in policy formulation, such that policies and measures that address climate change are integrated in development planning and sectoral decision-making.
On the part of the DA, it created the Systems-Wide Climate Change Office in 2013 and later renamed it to the Climate Resilience Agriculture Office (CRAO). The CRAO was initially placed under the Office of the DA Secretary to ensure that various units of the department embed climate-resilient agricultural practices in their programs and projects.
It is obvious that these climate-resilience measures cannot remain at the document or theoretical level if the adverse impacts of climate change are to be mitigated. They have to be implemented at the ground or local level where one can see their results.
Along this line, the CRAO initiated the establishment of Adaptation and Mitigation Initiative in Agriculture (AMIA) villages in selected sites as pilots for climate-resilient agriculture practices. AMIA aims to provide information on the challenges posed by climate change.
It promotes climate-resilient agricultural technologies and practices to target communities, for them to manage climate risks while pursuing livelihood activities. The project extends support services to communities from the DA, local government units (LGUs) and DA partner organizations.
While AMIA is a commendable project, its implementation is however limited to a few hundred villages. From its launching until the end of June 2024, there were only 187 villages in 61 provinces where AMIA is being implemented. This is a disservice to communities suffering from climate change-related challenges.
AMIA mitigates these challenges as it provides information to highly vulnerable areas regarding weather disturbances, satellite-based weather updating, training for farmers and fishers on how to cope with climate-related challenges, etc.
By now, the AMIA experience should have been upscaled on a nationwide basis given the country’s vulnerability to climate change. But given limited resources and attention (which ironically occurs in the aftermath of climate-related disasters), AMIA’s massive replication will proceed at a turtle pace. Why is this so?
First, our policymakers, particularly politicians, will not give priority to climate change-related mitigation measures because these do not have immediate visible physical results that can be attributed to them. The gestation period for the positive effects may take longer than three years — beyond our three-year election cycle. Thus, politicians cannot latch on to these beneficial results in aid of their reelection bids.
Second, our leaders suffer from the absence of a long-term development vision for the country. A cursory examination of the provision of our infrastructure will reveal this. Many of these facilities should have been built and completed 10 years ago. This is the simple explanation why we suffer daily traffic gridlocks or shortages of basic services such as energy, water and telecommunications.
And third is our “bahala na” (come what may) attitude that permeates our collective psyche. Filipinos think that we are good at improvising when emergencies happen. The thinking is that we will be able to cope with the crisis (“makakaraos din” or we’ll get through this) because we are resilient and ridiculously patient with and forgiving of our leaders.
Moving forward, the climate change agenda in agriculture will necessitate a number of decisive actions from our leaders.
One, there will be a need for a strong and properly supported CRAO office complete with plantilla positions and staffed with technically qualified personnel hired on a regular basis. The CRAO cannot remain effective discharging its functions when most of its staff are hired under a “job order” (contractual) arrangement. Inevitably, there will be a rapid turnover of qualified staff given high demand for their services in the private and civil society sectors, both here and abroad.
If it wants to, the DA can find the necessary resources to strengthen the CRAO. It has done this with its organic agriculture thrust, as part of the National Organic Agriculture Act, by creating plantilla positions to hire qualified regular staff to promote the practice. While promoting organic agriculture commendable, its relevance pales in comparison to advancing climate challenge-related responses as these impact across agricultural commodities.
Two, there has to be an intensified campaign for more active LGU participation in climate change-related responses given that the effectiveness of these measures can only be tested at the ground level. Such responses will have to be tailor-fit to the local ecological situation if these are to be successful in mitigating the adverse effects of climate change.
Whether our policymakers and politicians ignore climate change or not, it will remain a key factor in determining if we will have a resilient agricultural sector capable of meeting the country’s food security needs. Climate change is similar to the theoretical “market” (Adam Smith termed it as the “invisible hand”) that economists are wont to discuss.
One can ignore the market for the moment by pouring more of the country’s resources to counter its effect. But in the medium and long run, market forces will assert themselves at a greater intensity and in the process, bring the economy down to its knees and mire its people in economic misery.
In the same vein, we can ignore the impacts of climate change by not providing the agenda with the proper resources and attention. However, given the trajectory of the world ecology, the challenges of climate change are predicted to intensify, and a country which is unprepared to respond to its challenges will experience terrible losses in terms of resources and more importantly, human lives.
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