EXTREME weather events such as the current dry conditions brought about by the El Niño phenomenon or flooding due to torrential rains from typhoons – all courtesy of climate change – pose risks in the growth of the agriculture sector and in the government’s efforts to address poverty. Climate change impacts make poverty reduction more difficult, further erode food security, and prolong existing and create new poverty traps. In fact, the frequent dismal growth in agriculture is partly due to disasters, particularly typhoons and droughts.
Government must improve public investments in agriculture, such as irrigation, and pouring more funds in research and development. The country’s agricultural adaptation program must ensure more investments in agricultural research and infrastructure, improved water governance and land use policies, better forecasting tools and early warning systems, a strengthened extension system that will assist farmers to achieve economic diversification, and access to credit and crop insurance to make significant improvements in the country’s food security goals.
The effect of the current El Niño is all there for everybody to see: losses to the country’s rice and crop production. Droughts – and its extreme opposite, typhoons – affect the agriculture sector. Past experiences have proven this fact. Typhoons, floods and droughts from 1970 to 1990 resulted in an 82.4 percent loss in total Philippine rice production; while the El Niño-related drought experienced in the country from 1990 to 2003 was estimated to have caused US$ 370 million in damages to agriculture.
We hope the government will be more proactive with its disaster resilience and climate change adaptation programs. The war against poverty will be much harder if disaster vulnerability remains unaddressed. Disasters are greatly felt by the poor because the effects are magnified in their life. For many Filipinos, every single day of work is synonymous to survival. When impassable roads due to heavy downpour prevent a daily wage earner from going to work, it would mean no earnings for the day, no food on the table.
