Coastal communities centered in MCR-ADMU’s second Climate Voices webinar

On 21 October 2022, the My Climate Risk – Ateneo de Manila University (MCR-ADMU) Regional Hub, which is hosted by the Ateneo Institute of Sustainability, organized a webinar titled “Climate Information Needs of Coastal Communities.” My Climate Risk is a lighthouse activity of the World Climate Research Programme which aims to develop and mainstream a bottom-up approach to regional climate risk, and has a mycorrhizal network of hubs that span all continents except Antarctica.

The webinar was co-hosted by the Manila Observatory, and featured Dr Laurice Jamero, Resilience Coordinator of the Manila Observatory, as resource speaker. She discussed ways and systems that vulnerable coastal communities understand and deal with climate risk. Joining her were Mr Gerry Boligao, Chairman of the Sangguniang Kabataan of Pangapasan Island, Tubigon, and Ms Jomelyn Entienza, staff at the Municipal Environment and Natural Resources Office of Municipal Government of Tubigon. Mr Boligao and Ms Entienza shared their perspectives on the climate information needs among coastal communities, as informed by their experiences of Typhoon Odette (international name Rai).

Fr Jose Ramon T Villarin, SJ, Executive Director of the Manila Observatory, delivered the Opening Remarks, where he recounted a story about a trip to a marine protected area, and noted how local fisherfolk have learned from their experiences and observations of their natural environment. Reflecting on the traditionally top-down nature of climate science, he noted the importance and power of listening to voices from different sectors, and how learning can be viewed as a reciprocal process. Dr Nikki Carsi Cruz, Assistant Professor and Chair of the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies of the Ateneo de Manila University, closed the program with a reflection on the need for listening and inter- and trans-disciplinary approaches to understanding risk and resilience. Both Fr Villarin and Dr Carsi Cruz are Collaborators of the Hub. The session was moderated by Mr Daniel C Ratilla, Program Officer for Climate and Disaster Resilience of the Ateneo Institute of Sustainability.

Dr Jamero began the discussion by introducing the contested loss and damage mechanism as a climate finance concept at the level of policy and science. This mechanism involves both economic and non-economic effects of climate change during extreme and slow-onset events, and also includes residual risk and its impacts. Contextualizing this, she noted that the Global Climate Risk Index ranked the Philippines as the fourth most affected country by climate change in the last two decades. On a local scale, Tubigon, a coastal town on the western side of Bohol with six island communities, is a stone’s throw away from Danahon Bank, one of only six double-barrier reefs in the world. Tubigon is thus one of the communities in the Philippines at the forefront of the loss and damage caused by climate change.

Mr Boligao recounted the negative effects brought about by Typhoon Odette in 2021. These followed a chronological order, from the loss of mobile signal and strong winds, the sudden rise of sea level, residents stranded in their homes, a storm surge, and their monitoring around the island the following morning. According to Mr Boligao, this was the first storm in which the whole island experienced food insecurity. Ms Entienza then shared that in recent years, floods get worse as sea levels rise to abnormally high levels each year, and added that this could be attributed to an earthquake that occurred on 13 October 2013.

Dr Jamero affirmed their experiences and stated that Typhoon Odette is considered the strongest storm of 2021; within 24 hours, the category of the storm rapidly intensified from 1 to 5, leaving communities with insufficient time to prepare. Its landfall in Bohol coincided with the peak tide at 9:30 pm, with a +1.3 m sea level rise, which explained the worsened storm surges that caused significant damage. She also noted that land subsidence had indeed occurred in 2013 and induced greater tidal flooding. This lowered the threshold for flood events from 2.2 m to 1.6 m. These experiences thus challenged the notion of the island’s resilience and exposed the limits of adaptation. In response, retreat plans such as relocation and evacuation are practiced on the island, and community-based and ecosystem-based adaptation projects, which include mangrove restoration, discouraging coral mining, and coastal engineering, are implemented.
 

Summarizing the apparent needs of coastal communities, Dr Jamero enumerated the following:

1. Better forecasting to capture rapid intensification and give accurate and early warning;
2. Better and more collaborative decision-making which relies on different methods and alternatives, not only models but also local ecological knowledge; and
3. Attribution science to discern human-induced climate change in extreme events.

The session was attended by participants from the Philippines, with international attendees from Australia, Belgium, France, India, Japan, Morocco, Nigeria, Qatar, Singapore, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Vietnam. This webinar was the second session in a series titled “Climate Voices on the Ground: Perspectives from Different Sectors.” The series occurred on successive Fridays of October 2022. Replays and highlights of the webinar series are available in the following page.