‘Mindanao needs more climate-adaptation investments’

Alladin S. Diega in the Business Mirror (Philippines): Funding is urgently needed to finance climate-change adaptation initiatives in Mindanao given the increasing vulnerability of the region to extreme weather disturbances.

“The impact of extreme weather events are particularly severe, especially on the people of Mindanao, a region that is reeling at the same time from conflict and extreme poverty,” Justin Morgan, country director of Oxfam in the Philippines, said during a forum held on Friday. He said Mindanao has recently been experiencing strong typhoons, believed to be directly connected to climate change, putting the livelihood of the people in the province at risk.

“But we are optimistic, and we believe that is possible to build resilience of these communities if the national government is able to scale up support, and other development actors invest more in climate-adaptation and risk-reduction initiatives in Mindanao,” Morgan said.

The forum was attended by local executives from the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, Central Mindanao, Caraga regions, and international non-governmental organizations and funding agencies.

“Developed countries must abide by their responsibility to provide much-needed climate-adaptation finance to vulnerable developing countries, under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change [UNFCCC],” Commissioner Naderev Sano of the Climate Change Commission said in a statement....

Mount Apo in Mindanao, the Philippines, shot by Suntown123, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. Subject to disclaimers

Philippine conflict-displaced on Mindanao now hit by floods

IRIN: Still recovering from three weeks of fighting between government troops and Muslim separatists that left tens of thousands displaced, battle-scarred Zamboanga region in the southern Philippine island of Mindanao is now dealing with flooding in already congested evacuation centres.

Rains brought by the annual southwest May-October monsoon and the effects of Typhoon Danas (locally known as Ramil) starting on 4 October wreaked havoc on the islands of Western and Central Visayas, Palawan and Mindanao, affecting close to 138,000 people and displacing 100,000, according to the government’s latest update on 10 October.

Worst-hit was the Zamboanga peninsula in Minadao, which includes the port city of Zamboanga where an almost month-long siege displaced about 119,000 people in the city plus another 8,100 in neighbouring Basilan Province, killing a total of 140 as of 29 September.

...The two sides are negotiating for the creation of what is envisioned to be an expanded autonomous region for Mindanao's Muslim population that would supersede the one handed to the MNLF, a development that Nur Misuari, its founder, and a number of fighters oppose...

The Zamboanga Peninsula on Mindanao, by Scorpion prinz, Wikimmedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Typhoon kills at least 283 in Philippines

Eric de Castro in Reuters: Blocked roads and severed communications in the southern Philippines frustrated rescuers on Wednesday as teams searched for hundreds of people missing after the strongest typhoon this year killed at least 283 people.

Typhoon Bopha, with central winds of 120 kph (75 mph) and gusts of up to 150 kph (93 mph), battered beach resorts and dive spots on Palawan island on Wednesday but it was weakening as it moved west. Hardest hit was the southern island of Mindanao, where Bopha made landfall on Tuesday. It triggered landslides and floods along the coast and in farming and mining towns inland.

Interior Minister Manuel Roxas said 300 people were missing. "Entire families were washed away," Roxas, who inspected the disaster zone, told reporters.

...According to tallies provided by the military and disaster agency officials, 283 people were killed....

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this natural-color, high definition image of powerful, strengthening, Typhoon Bopha, as a category 4 super typhoon, with winds of 240km/h and a pressure of 935hpa at the time the image was taken on December 2, 2012

Japan sends aid to Mindanao towns for climate change adaptation

MindaNews (Philippines): The Japanese government has allocated P17 million to boost agricultural practices of indigenous peoples in Mindanao, the Japanese embassy said in a statement.

Japanese Ambassador Toshinao Urabe signed early this week the grant contract for the “Construction of Small-Scale Agriculture Facilities for Climate Change Adaptation” with Oxfam Japan.

The project, amounting to US$ 399,263 (approximately 17 million pesos), is funded through the grant assistance for Japanese Non-Government Organization Projects, a small-grant funding program of Japan’s Official Development Assistance.

Oxfam Japan will implement the project in Esperanza, Sultan Kudarat and Balabagan in Lanao del Sur, which have witnessed harvest reductions of agricultural products in the past 15 years due to unusual weather conditions, the statement said....

Mindanao solons want planning to avoid calamities

Imelda V. Abaño And Bong D. Fabe in the Business Mirror (Philippines): The Philippine government urgently needs more planning to respond to the growing threats of disaster aggravated by climate change such as the devastation brought by the recent series of floods, earthquakes and tsunamis, said Sen. Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel III.

Pimentel, who convened the Mindanao Summit on Disaster Risk Reduction and Geo-Hazard Awareness together with Sen. Teofisto Guingona III on Feb. 18-19, told the 500 participants mostly from Mindanao that better planning is needed as the vulnerability of the country to catastrophes is growing.

Guingona called for the crafting of a comprehensive disaster management plan for Mindanao, noting that what happens in one place in the island affects other places. “It is now time to have a Mindanao island-wide disaster management plan. Disaster and calamities such as typhoons and storms no longer spare Mindanao. What happened in one place also affect others,” he said at the sideline of the Mindanao Disaster Risk Reduction Summit which opened here the morning of Saturday, Feb. 18.

Guingona, who calls the province of Bukidnon home, said that the environment in Mindanao is interconnected and as such, one city’s or province’s disaster management plan should be related to the plan of its neighbors. “It is no longer acceptable that a city or province has a disaster management plan that is not connected or related to its neighbors’ Mindanao now needs a comprehensive plan for disaster,” he stressed.

The summit was organized two months after Typhoon Sendong hit Northern Mindanao, killing more than 1,200 people and destroying homes, schools, agriculture products and infrastructures especially in this city and Iligan City. At present, hundreds of families are still living in the evacuation centers and temporary shelters  which generally have no electricity and not enough water, food and other basic needs. They are also poorly ventilated.

“We need to know better ideas on how to mitigate the effects of natural disasters and even to prevent man-made catastrophes,” Pimentel said during the summit, adding that the economic and human impact of the disasters in the country is extraordinary....

Typhoon Ewiniar formed in the western Pacific on June 29, 2006, shown here approaching Mindanao in the Philippines, visible well to the storm’s west. From NASA

Remote parts of flood-struck Mindanao lose out on aid

Thin Lei Win in AlertNet: Almost a month after a fatal storm hit the north of Mindanao island in the Philippines, relief efforts are largely ignoring hundreds of thousands of affected people in remote areas and outside evacuation centres, the United Nations’ refugee agency told AlertNet.

In mid-December Tropical Storm Washi, said to be one of the country’s worst natural disasters in two decades, killed more than 1,200 people on the conflict-ravaged island in the southern Philippines. It also destroyed more than 10,000 houses and displaced more than 300,000 people, mainly in the cities of Iligan and Cagayan de Oro. About 176 people are still missing, the latest U.N. situation report showed.

“Our biggest concern is that charities and aid agencies seem to be providing assistance to evacuation centres only. People living outside the centres and (in) remote places are not getting the same support,” Brenda Escalante, associate protection officer for the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) in the Philippines, told AlertNet by phone from the disaster zone.

“Even without typhoons, these remotes communities were already marginalised and poor... they are also victims of the conflict that is affecting the island, so the disaster is compounding their problems.” A decades-old conflict between government forces and Muslim separatists in Mindanao has killed 120,000 people, displaced 2 million and stunted growth in the poor but resource-rich island....

NASA satellite image of the Philippines