FARMERS in San Manuel town in Pangasinan province continue to plant palay even as erratic weather has disrupted the rice cycle and triggered floods that occasionally destroy their crops and farmlands. WILLIE LOMIBAO/CONTRIBUTOR
Even as a boy, Ponciano Onia, 47, considered himself a farmer.
“I belong to a family of farmers. My work ranged from cleaning the pilapil (mini earth dikes) of weeds to helping in preparing the land, planting and harvesting. I was immersed in all aspects of rice production,” Onia said.
He knew then that on the last days of April or the first days of May every year, the rains will come as sure as the sun rises in the morning and sets in the afternoon.
The farmers will start to work on the fields, which have been softened by the rain. Then they will sow palay seeds that will be ready for replanting after 30 days.
“Farmers knew the weather cycle and worked accordingly. They planted in June or July and their crops are caressed by gentle rain, which stops when it is no longer needed. Then they harvest by November to December,” said Onia, who now owns several hectares of rice land.
But things are different now, he rued.
“There is rain only when there is typhoon. There is that thing called habagat (southwest monsoon), which brings too much rain and drench, even flood, the land. But when the typhoon or habagat [leaves], our agricultural lands are parched,” he said.
Farmers have to resort to shallow wells to water their crops until the next heavy rain.
But even the earth has become stingy with water. “We need more pipes to reach the water underground,” he said.
In the first week of August this year, farmers who sowed palay seeds, prayed for rain. About two weeks later, it did. But the rain came in torrents and the rice fields were flooded for days, drowning their palay.
Unlike before when the farmers knew it was time to prepare the fields, now planting activities are “like a gamble,” he said.
“You don’t know when the rain will come. When it does, you plant and just hope for the best,” he said.
Onia, the president of the party-list group Abono, which helps small farmers, said most farmers know that the erratic weather is caused by climate change.
“We hear it on radio, on television and during discussions with agricultural technicians and we read about it. Maybe we are victims of this phenomenon but we have to deal with it the best way we can,” he said.
Not just Philippines
The problem is not limited to the Philippines.
In a poor, rural province of Indonesia, farmers are getting confused about the weather, said Riza Bernabe, policy and research coordinator of Oxfam, an international confederation of 17 organizations, during a recent forum on climate change held in Metro Manila.
Bernabe said when she went to Indonesia three years ago, farmers told her that harvest was bad because “what used to be rainy days are now sunny, and what used to be sunny days are now rainy days.”
“They did not know that it was caused by climate change,” she said.
Bernabe said it was bad that the problem, largely attributed to pollution and carbon emission from developed countries, is severely affecting farmers in poor countries where governments do not have resources to address the problem.
“The impact of climate change is felt by everyone. One country could not come up with adaptation solutions. Besides, poor countries are not the main contributors [to the problem],” she said.
“This is why Asean (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) countries should have a collective voice in pushing
developed countries to allocate funds [to ease the impact of] climate change, to come up with a regional agreement to allocate resources for resilience, and also to come up with the technology to [mitigate the problem],” she added.
In the Philippines, the problem of climate change is real.
“The Philippines is one of the most vulnerable nations to climate change. We have to do something immediately,” said Dr. Orlando Mercado, secretary general of the Eastern Regional Organization for Public Administration (Eropa), during the forum.
Mercado, a former Philippine senator, authored “The 2015 Climate Challenge,” a policy brief of the Asean for a Fair, Ambitious and Binding Climate Deal (Afab).
Afab is a partnership of Oxfam, Greenpeace and Eropa in Southeast Asia.
Mercado said one of the proofs of climate change is the frequent flooding in Metro Manila. “Flooding is the new normal. Even government [authorities] are saying this is the new normal. Let us not hope that [Typhoon] ‘Ondoy’ or the habagat are extraordinary,” he said.
“Even [if we plant] all the trees we can plant in the Sierra Madre [mountains], it would take another generation to the see the trees that would hold all water that would flow into the watersheds. Even if they complete the Parañaque spillway, even if they dredge the Laguna de Bay, it will take some time before [the results are seen],” he said.
Mercado said while the government allocates funds for disasters, this can be used only after disasters have occurred.
“I am sure there is money, but it is for coping with disaster. Five percent of the local governments’ budgets are set aside for calamities, but it can be used only after calamities have occurred. It can’t even be spent on disaster risk reduction, but for rescue, search, relief and relocation. I don’t think there’s enough money for rehabilitation,” he said.
Mercado said climate change is not getting attention, except during disasters.
“The time to talk about flooding is when there is no flood, about earthquake when there is no earthquake yet. The moment there is flood or there is earthquake, it is late already for us,” he said.
High risk areas
But since the Philippines cannot do it alone, Mercado said it should close ranks with Asean countries that are vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.
He identified the Philippines, most of Cambodia, Vietnam’s Mekong River Delta, north and east of Laos, Bangkok in Thailand, South and West Sumatra and West and East Java in Indonesia as high risk areas.
“The region remains to be one of the most vulnerable in the world. Australia’s Office of National Assessments and Myanmar’s climate expert, Dr. Tun Lwin, attribute the severe weather conditions like monsoon rains and stronger, more frequent typhoons and tropical storms to climate change,” he said.
While the region’s economy is improving, Mercado said Asean leaders have not seriously addressed climate change.
“It would seem that they have not realized that the old way of economic development—one that is heavily dependent on oil—gradually wrecks the environment of the economies they are developing,” Mercado said.
The environmental coalition of Greenpeace, Oxfam and Eropa proposed that Asean should improve its renewable energy targets and initiate transboundary environmental and climate change negotiations to advance the interest of the region.
“What should Asean do? The economies should be low-carbon and should have a policy to support renewable energy and policy to support to subsidize fuel and oil,” he said.
Mercado admitted that pushing climate change even in the media is not easy because “it is somehow a difficult issue to understand.”
Even among political leaders, funding climate change interventions is unattractive. “Who would want to fund a project in the mountains? There are no voters there,” he said.
“But it is imperative to find ways to put the issue in everyone’s consciousness. There should be a public policy on climate change mitigation that won’t be changed with every change of leadership. We should also plant all the trees we can plant in the mountains so that the problem won’t be this [grave] in the next generation,” he said.