Last week, a disturbing news came up. According to a study, ten provinces in the Philippines are the most at risk of damage from extreme weather to their buildings and other property developments in about two decades. What is frightening is that Pampanga is second in that list.
According to the 2023 Gross Domestic Climate Risk ranking by the Sydney-based climate-change research firm The Cross Dependency Initiative (XDI), Pangasinan, Pampanga, Nueva Ecija, Cagayan and Tarlac are the five most at-risk provinces based on their aggregated damage ratio (ADR)—or the total amount of damage to their built environment because of climate-induced disasters such as flooding and rising sea levels.
Out of the 2,639 jurisdictions (states, provinces and territories) worldwide covered by the report, Pangasinan’s ADR ranked 238th, followed by Pampanga at 268th, Nueva Ecija at 359th, Cagayan at 417th and Tarlac at 430th place. The other five provinces are Metro Manila, Bulacan, Isabela, Davao Del sur and Leyte.
I did not check the methodology of the study, but I do know that the coastal towns of Pampanga frequently suffers from flooding during the rainy season. This flooding will get worse with rising sea levels due to melting ice brought about by global warming. There is a possibility that water from Manila Bay where Pampanga River discharges, will flow back and inundate areas along the riverbanks. In 2011, I’ve seen a presentation in a forum that discussed this scenario.
In that forum on Climate Change organized by the environment committee of the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the speaker was Dr. Neric Acosta, a three-term Congressman of Bukidnon who authored the major environmental legislations on air, water and solid waste. He presented a simulation of a 6-meter rise in sea level which showed that the flood will reach even the City of San Fernando. He said that that the flooding brought by typhoons Ondoy and Pepeng somehow confirmed their model.
The sea level rise might come sooner than expected. In the Philippines, sea level is rising three times faster than the global average, according Rosalina De Guzman, a climate scientist of the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa). She did not explain why this is so. Another Pagasa scientist, Dr. Marcelino Villafuerte, said that the sea level in the Philippine Sea had risen by about 12 centimeters over the past two decades.
Complicating the flooding problem in Pampanga is another phenomenon – sinking land. This is called land subsidence, the sinking of the ground because of underground material movement most often caused by the removal of water, oil, natural gas, or mineral resources out of the ground by pumping, fracking, or mining activities. In the case of Pampanga, it’s the excessive pumping of ground water from deep wells for domestic, agricultural and industrial purposes that is causing it. There’s a report in 2019 which said that the provinces of Bulacan and Pampanga have sunk between 4 to 6 centimeters since 2003.
Land sinking and sea level rising is a deadly combination for disaster.