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Sunday, March 14, 2004
Wet summer, warm December
By Stella A. Estremera
Global warming now worse than ever
BY FEBRUARY, which used to be among the coldest months, was very hot in Davao. Then March came. What was normally hot was an unpredictable interplay of hot, arid, wet, and cold. And remember how we were not able to use up all our jackets for those cold Christmas mornings because there wasn't that many last December?
Those of us who have lived many a summer will agree, this is not how Christmases and summers were before and there is reason to be concerned.
The Pentagon report
In February this year, major US and European newspapers carried a story about a Pentagon report warning of the dire consequences, including wars, because of climate change.
The Pentagon predictions come as early as 2007... a mere three years from now.
"By 2007 violent storms smash coastal barriers rendering large parts of the Netherlands uninhabitable. Cities like The Hague are abandoned. In California the delta island levees in the Sacramento River area are breached, disrupting the aqueduct system transporting water from north to south," the report read.
Among the leaked Pentagon report's findings states that "future wars will be fought over the issue of survival rather than religion, ideology or national honor."
Influential Pentagon defense adviser Andrew Marshall commissioned the secret report, allegedly suppressed by US defense chiefs but obtained by The Observer.
Authors of the report are Peter Schwartz, CIA consultant and former head of planning at Royal Dutch/Shell Group, and Doug Randall of the California-based Global Business Network.
Mega-droughts will affect the world's major breadbaskets, including America's Midwest, where strong winds bring soil loss, is also among the report's warnings.
Doomsday scenarios? Definitely. But there is reason to believe... we only have to browse the Internet to find news about floods, and cold and heat waves to understand that something is going wrong.
In the US, the scientific world is astir, challenging president George W. Bush to heed the Pentagon warning and not sweep this under the carpet as he apparently did before The Observer got a copy and it's getting to be a key election issue.
Climate change
While not much is heard about climate change in the Philippines, this is all because the nation's attention is so enraptured in politics. But those who are tracking climate know better and are now raising points of concern.
In last March 4's public briefing and workshop on Climate Change spearheaded by Klima, the Climate Change Center, held at Marco Polo Hotel Davao, Lourdes Tibig of the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical, and Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa) simplified climate change as the effect of both natural and man-made causes that contribute to global warming as well as air quality degradation and ozone depletion.
Global warming, she said, causes sea level to rise and also extreme climatic variability and events like floods, droughts, strong winds, storm surges, and heat and cold waves.
All these, she added, has dire effects on water resources, agriculture and land use, forestry, terrestrial and marine ecosystem, and human settlement, energy, industry, health and comfort.
Diseases like no other
In terms of health, she said, climate change causes increase in weather-related mortality and infectious diseases.
In a separate presentation, Dr. Glenn Paraso of the Philippine Rural Reconstruction Movement (PRRM), lists climate sensitive diseases as heat stress, asthma, vector-borne diseases, water-borne disease, food-borne disease, violence, myocardial infraction, tuberculosis, atherosclerosis, most cancers, as well as sexually transmitted disease.
"While extreme weather events are more the norm in our area of the world, sicknesses are not thought to be climate induced for the great majority of the population, thus when epidemics happen the cause is for the most part thought of to be biologic. Thinking of climate sensitive diseases would be a far priority," Dr. Paraso said.
But, Paraso noted, there are more and more so-called emerging diseases of the 21st century that are harder to treat and has larger global distribution.
Sars, bird flu, and yes, even the pandemic dengue in Indonesia--all these must be saying something.
Thus, he said, "Uncertainty about adverse health effects should not be interpreted as confidence of no adverse health effects. Our 'nothing is happening' attitude might find us at an irreversible point where health impact happen in non-linear unpredictable terms."
"We should be on the preventive mode, not curative mode," he added.
No food
Beyond health, Tibig continued, extreme weather conditions affect agriculture that will result in lower or unpredictable crop yields and higher irrigation demands. Forest resources will also be affected.
In consonance to this, one other key point in the Pentagon report is that "deaths from war and famine (will) run into the millions until the planet's population is reduced by such an extent the Earth can cope."
Water resources will be direly affected, Tibig added, and there will be "competition" for potable water.
"Access to water becomes a major battleground" is still another key point in the Pentagon report.
"Between 2010 and 2020 Europe is hardest hit by climatic change with an average annual temperature drop of 6F. Climate in Britain becomes colder and drier as weather patterns begin to resemble Siberia," the Pentagon report read.
Down here, there will be erosion of beaches, inundation of coastal lands, and loss of habitat and species if the trend continues, Tibig said.
No power
Closer to home, Tibig singled out Lake Lanao, that vast body of water that is key to Mindanao's power supply, and its surrounding watershed area.
Using simulations of changes in rainfall caused by climate change, Tibig said that a 10 percent decrease in rainfall reduces the Lake runoff by 2 percent. But a 20 percent decrease in rainfall decreases the runoff by as much as 18 percent.
Simulations of changes both in rainfall and temperature for Lake Lanao, however, show that a 2 deg. centigrade increase in temperature plus a ten percent decrease in rainfall results to a 2.5 percent decrease in runoff and a 2 deg. centigrade increase in temperature plus a 20 percent decrease in rainfall can result to an 18.2 percent decrease in runoff.
From these simulations, she said, they have determined that the Lake Lanao watershed "is highly vulnerable to global warming."
Match this with the fact that the water requirements for power generation at NPC-Mindanao are already not adequately provided then further climate change will reduce power supply to critical levels.
Just heat
In the presentation on Ecological Vulnerability by Jose Ramon T. Villarin SJ of Klima and May Celine T.M. Vicente of Manila Observatory in the same workshop, they pointed out that the 1990s is recorded as the warmest decade since 1860 and that 1998 was the warmest year.
"Due to increased evaporation and precipitation, global warming causes dry months to become drier and wet months to become wetter," they said in their report.
They also said that global warming leads to sea level rise (SLR). "Our archipelagic nature and long coastline makes the Philippines especially vulnerable to SLR," they said.
Most threatened, Tibig said, will be settlements in low-lying coastal areas, floodplains and hillsides "particularly squatter colonies" as well as "indigenous communities highly dependent on climate-sensitive natural resources".
What needs to be done
In Fr. Villarin's presentation, he listed mitigation measures and strategies to address the problem within our midst:
For energy and transport - greater use of renewable energy like solar, wind, biomass, tide, and hydroelectric), higher energy efficiency and conservation, the use of alternative fuels, and increasing public transport and traffic management.
For waters, this requires solid waste and wastewater management as well as methane capture.
For land use and land use change and forestry, this requires reforestation, afforestation, and urban land use planning.
And for agriculture, he said, this requires agriculture residue management and animal waste management.
He also lists several adaptation measures and response strategies that have to be undertaken for the various resources affected.
For agriculture, he said, this will require development of new suite of crops, improved water management in irrigation, diversification, integrated pest management, improve land management and use, soil conservation, and economic options to include liberalization of trade barriers, subsidies and incentives, the reversal to traditional agriculture and agro forestry, stricter quarantine, monitoring and surveillance of invasive and introduced species.
For coastal zones, the hard option will mean construction of seawalls to keep the seawater off although the preferred option, the soft one, is beach nourishment, coral reef protection, marine conservation, coastal planning, zoning, shoreline stabilization, restoration, rehabilitation and reclamation.
Water resources have to be addressed through flood control and mitigation, conservation, increase in reservoir capacity, groundwater resources and watershed management, the construction of desalination plants, better management of water demand for irrigation.
For human health, this requires massive awareness programs, monitoring, surveillance of vectors (a.k.a. lamok or similar disease-carrying organisms), improved standard of living and emergency response systems.
For terrestrial ecosystems and forests, he lists conservation of biodiversity, forest conservation, plantation forestry, soil seed banks, efficient use of forest resources, prevention of forest fires, development and trials of new and faster growing trees and plants, rehabilitation and protection of degraded lands, integration of existing policies to future adaptation.
Lastly, for fisheries, he recommends data collection, research, monitoring and surveillance of fish stocks, and management and sustainable use or marine resources.
The key, he said, is "sustainability", which he defines as "leaving something for our children".
"Just like us, future generations will need food, water, energy and land, not to mention some wilderness somewhere. This means we can't behave like guests at the mad hatter's tea party, polishing off one plate and moving on to the next. We need to act responsibly, leaving something for another day," Fr. Villarin said.
(March 14, 2004 issue)
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