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Philippine Environment and Climate Change: An Assessment of Policies and their Impacts

The Philippines has been considered as highly vulnerable to current, as well as future, risks associated with climate change.

Every year, the Philippines experiences eight to nine tropical cyclones making a landfall, mild earthquakes, recurring landslides and flooding. The country is also periodically affected by the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) that induces prolonged wet and dry seasons, adversely affecting the local economy.

Climate change is thus expected to exacerbate existing stresses in the country, particularly the more vulnerable natural ecosystems and local communities.

Sad to say, however, climate change is yet to be mainstreamed into the Philippine development policy arena having reviewed 195 presidential decrees, republic acts, executive orders, government agency administrative orders and memoranda, LGU ordinances and proclamations. Unfortunately, very few of these laws address even in the slightest the growing concerns brought about by the increasing trend of climate change, climate variability, and risks.

Whenever climate change is recognized or acknowledged, the focus and emphasis of national policy have been more of mitigation, and adaptation to risks associated with current climate variability and extremes. Clearly, national decision makers do not yet see climate change as a high priority issue in the context of national development plans because their attention is focused more on the actual destruction caused by yearly climate hazards.

The Philippine government is nevertheless actively pursuing a number of milestones and activities to address climate change. The most recent one of these is the creation of the Presidential Task Force on Climate Change (PTFCC), which has been tasked with addressing the issue of climate change, mitigating its impacts, and leading in adapting to these impacts.

  • Philippine Environment and Climate Change: An Assessment of Policies and their Impacts
  • Author/s: Rodel D. Lasco, Roberta Gerpacio, Patricia Ann J. Sanchez, and Rafaela Jane P. Delfino
  • Year: 2008
  • Publication Type: Policy Brief Series