The Philippines is ranked by the World Bank as the third most vulnerable country in the world in view of extreme climate events and natural hazards (e.g. typhoons, floods, droughts, landslides, sea level rise and heat waves). Many of these are slow onset events that come with climate change. Thus they escaped policy makers attention until almost too late, and nowadays their consequences are devastating and their occurrence more frequent. Once one-in-a-century events may now happen several times in a decade. The Philippines has witnessed increasing strength and frequency of extreme weather events. Stronger Typhoons, more severe floods, longer dry spells, were individually already challenging enough but now happening concurrently are a huge threat to lives, livelihood and development. As many communities are rapidly growing and lack alternatives to move out of harm’s way, the number of people and the value of infrastructure and agricultural and industrial means of livelihood exposed to these risks is increasing. In December 2021 Super Typhon Odette (internationally known as Rai) cut its devastating swath through Northern Mindanao and the Visayas causing 407 fatalities and billions of Pesos in damages to agriculture and infrastructure.

GMAI has been active in Disaster Response in  the aftermath of Supertyphoon Yolanda (international name Haiyan), supporting the construction of houses for about 5,000 families. It has shared in the trauma of these affected communities and seen the necessity to increase disaster reliance and preparedness in a cost-effective way. Its approach was to assist the communities through storm resilient building designs and with building materials but relying on the local skills and community spirit to facilitate the construction of the houses. This increased response time, acceptance, gender equity and community involvement.

As shown in other work of GMAI (like its ecological assessment after the Sendong disaster in CdO link) it studied the importance of integrating green solutions for protection of rural and urban dwellings and infrastructure. The need to account for climate risk resilience in an ever-changing environment that will bring widespread drought and resulting water scarcity in some areas and increased risk of flooding and severe storms in others – even within a single country – calls for new approaches beyond the traditional grey solutions of levees, dikes, reservoirs and pumps. So-called nature-based solutions are essential to make any mitigation efforts affordable and sustainable.

The oft seen preferences for grey infrastructure to counter coastal erosion and the effects of threatening storm surges like construction of coastal roads or on- and offshore wave breakers made of cement are doubly damaging as they destroy natural and human coastal environments, have huge carbon impacts in their creation and also neglect the chances of harnessing the power of green solutions. Preservation of wetlands near or within city boundaries and the creation or restoration of floodplains have the chance to reduce or control urban flooding which has become a common curse of ASEAN cities. River flood management through the construction of ever higher dikes have shown their futility and propensity to corruption since the days of the mega dike projects after the Pinatubo eruption.

The case for Ecosystem Based Approaches (EbA) has been getting stronger and their cost effectivity shown in research (Baig, S. P., Rizvi, A., Josella, M., Palanca-Tan, R. 2016. Cost and Benefits of Ecosystem Based Adaptation: The Case of the Philippines. Gland, Switzerland: IUCN. viii + 32pp). When these facts are shown to governments and communities they are likely to invest in those solutions as alternatives to traditional engineered approaches that are known to carry huge environmental and societal costs (e.g. due to destruction of wetlands or disturbance of biospheres as well as displacement of households and even whole communities).

Mangroves, their associates and other beach forests, are a recognized green solution to reduce damage caused by waves and storm surges, they help to fend off erosion and are a source of livelihood as well as being precious wetland preserves that are key biodiversity areas.

It is in this light that GMAI is investing in ecosystem based approaches to enable at risk communities to formulate responses to cope with an ever changing environment that puts their very survival at risk.

Further reading Reid H, Hou Jones X, Porras I, Hicks C, Wicander S, Seddon N, Kapos V, Rizvi A R, Roe D (2019) Is ecosystem-based adaptation effective? Perceptions and lessons learned from 13 project sites. IIED Research Report. IIED, London.