Climate change in the Philippines will continue and accelerate, which poses major risks for the nation’s long-term development, the World Bank warned.
Based on the World Bank’s report on Wednesday, Nov. 9, climate change could hamper the country’s ambition of becoming a high-income country by 2045 given its heavy toll on Filipinos’ lives, properties, and livelihoods.
Multiple indices rank the Philippines as one of the countries most affected by extreme climate events. The country has experienced highly destructive typhoons almost annually for the past 10-years.
Annual losses from typhoons have been estimated at 1.2 percent of the economy, or gross domestic product (GDP), and as much as 4.6 percent of GDP in extreme cases like Super Typhoon Yolanda in 2013.
If left unaddressed, World Bank said climate shocks would continue to hamper economic activities, damage infrastructure, and induce deep social disruptions.
In the World Bank’s country climate change and development report for the Philippines, it recommended several measures to protect the economy from climate shocks.
Among these recommendations were avoiding new construction in flood-prone areas; improving water storage to reduce the risk of damaging floods and droughts. This will also increase water availability.
Likewise, World Bank wants to extend irrigation in rainfed areas and promote climate-smart agriculture practices such as Alternate Wetting and Drying (AWD).
Moreover, the bank suggested to make social protection programs adaptive and scalable to respond to climate shocks as well as remove the obstacles that private actors face in scaling investments in renewable energy.
Lastly, the government regulators should ensure new buildings are energy efficient and climate resilient, World Bank said.
Manuela V. Ferro, World Bank vice-president for East Asia and Pacific, said the Philippines would benefit from an energy transition towards more renewable energy.
“Accelerated decarbonization would reduce electricity costs by about 20 percent below current levels which is good for the country’s competitiveness and would also dramatically reduce air pollution,” Ferro said.
The private sector has a crucial role to play in accelerating the adoption of green technologies and ramping up climate finance by working with local financial institutions and regulators, World Bank said.
“The investments needed to undertake these actions are substantial, but not out of reach,” John Gandolfo, International Finance Corp., acting vice president for Asia and the Pacific said.
“The business leaders and bankers who embrace climate as a business opportunity and offer these low-carbon technologies, goods and services will be the front runners of our future,” Gandolfo said.