Do we respond to climate change through mitigation or adaptation?

“Ideally we should do both, but under heavy resource constraints, we must prioritize adaptation.” This is according to Dr. Rex Victor Cruz, head of the CFNR Environmental Forestry Program and a coordinating lead author of the fourth assessment report of the United Nations Environmental Programme-World Meteorological Organization Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which was recently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, along with former US Vice President Al Gore. Other coordinating lead authors from the CFNR were Dr. Rodel Lasco and Dr. Juan Pulhin.

Dr. Cruz says that we should focus our resources on adaptation since climate change is going to move forward regardless of what we do now. Nevertheless, since mitigation is a moral issue, he said that we should also pursue it by “trying to be prudent in the way we use our resources.” Dr. Cruz advocates prioritizing adaptation measures also because our country has a relatively small contribution to global warming and climate change compared to other countries.

Dr. Cruz said these in his seminar “Climate Change: Implications on Local Governance” on Nov. 7 at the Institute of Statistics Lecture Hall. The seminar was part of an initiative by the UPLB Interdisciplinary Program on Climate Change (IdPCC) to promote knowledge-based actions on the climate change issue through seminars and other forms of information, education and communication campaigns. Dr. Cruz, who is also a member of the IdPCC, said that increasing the level of awareness on climate change and local adaptation measures, especially among officials of local government units, is important because “they are the ones who are waging the war at the battlefront.”

“Climate change is unequivocal”

This, according to Dr. Cruz, is one of the highlights of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report. He said that paleoclimatic evidences or ice core specimens from about 650,000 years ago show that global temperature has been increasing. Different groups of climate scientists have also gathered data using different models that show a convergence of their findings on climate change. According to Dr. Cruz, these are irrefutable pieces of evidence to counter skepticism of the global warming-climate change link.

“Climate scientists have established that temperature is going to increase in the next decades, even up to the year 2100. Some areas will experience increased precipitation while some areas will experience declining precipitation. Precipitation is going to increase even more in areas that have already experienced increase in rainfall pattern and areas that have experienced decreasing rainfall will have even less rainfall,” said Dr. Cruz.

In Asia, as reflected in the IPCC report, change is and will be consistent with global trends. Intense rainfall will become more frequent events in parts of South Asia, Southeast Asia and East Asia. Dr. Cruz said that as of now, we still have not seen discernible increases in the occurrence of intense cyclones or typhoons. However, as PAGASA has confirmed, there are already trends of increasing intensity as exemplified by typhoons Milenyo, Reming and Paeng in 2006. Change will also manifest in rising sea levels, he said.

Impacts of climate change

According to Dr. Cruz, climate change will directly affect both the human system and the natural system. Indirectly, it will result, among others, in rising sea levels, change in land and water, and shift in distribution of disease vectors.

The key observed impacts of climate change in the Philippines include increased and intensified tropical cyclones, more prominent El Niño and La Niña events, excessive rains, landslides, intense typhoons, floods, mudflows, forest fires, droughts and reduction in water resources, decline in agriculture and aquatic production, increased incidence of vector- and water-borne diseases, among others.

Dr. Cruz further said that climate change will magnify the problems from other stress factors on the human and natural systems including population growth, land use change, over-exploitation of resources and pollution. Ecosystems and the environment will be more stressed. The increase in temperature of at least 1½ to 2½ degrees centigrade will lead to 20-30 percent loss of plants and animals, and increase the risk of extinction and threaten biodiversity. The bottom line, given such a situation, according to Dr. Cruz, is that climate change is going to put a drag on the economy. It is going to slow down development because of the damage to infrastructure and the loss of income.

Adaptation and mitigation

Adaptation is intended to increase the resilience or the capacity to cope with current and future climate change, and to capitalize on their opportunities. Dr. Cruz said that climate change is not really all that negative because it may also have good effects. For instance, enhanced rainfall will enhance agricultural productivity in some areas.

Adaptation may be anticipatory or reactive, the former being preventive and the latter spontaneous. “In fighting climate change, we should not only be reactive. We must anticipate and plan the adaptation to these more drastic changes,” Dr. Cruz said.

Mitigation, on the other hand, is reducing the sources of carbon emissions, and thus, the concentration of greenhouse gases, which is the major cause of global warming. Burning fossil fuels, deforestation and land use change account for 65-70 percent and 30-35 percent of the harmful carbon that depletes the ozone layer and results in global warming and climate change. Mitigation measures include planting trees, afforestation, plantation development, and the use of biofuels and renewable energy sources.

How to proceed

Dr. Cruz said that the LGUs may follow the example of the town of Paete, which tapped the CFNR’s expertise after it experienced landslides and flooding in August 2002. The CFNR team identified vulnerable or threatened places and people, examined the town’s adaptive capacities, and developed a plan for it to cope with the effects of climate change.

He suggested adaptation measures that the LGU heads may take to soften the impact of climate change. These include reviewing and updating the land use plans, zoning ordinances and barangay development plans, and integrating climate change into the barangay flagship programs.

Existing adaptive mechanisms must be identified and enriched. Dr. Cruz says that the cognitive barrier to adaptation to climate change remains high and thus, we must be able to inform, educate and communicate in order to remove this barrier. He also suggested that schools should incorporate the topic on climate change and adaptation and mitigation in their curriculum.

Dr. Cruz believes that people must learn to prepare for disasters by monitoring and observing weather conditions, collaborating with PAGASA and research and academic institutions. He said that coordinating bodies that government tends to create with each new disaster only duplicates the functions of existing bodies. Instead he advocates strengthening and improving coordination among existing concerned agencies. In closing, Dr. Cruz emphasized the need to act and be decisive. “Inaction now will be costlier. Indecision now will mean harder decisions in the future,” he said.