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Through Typhoons and Floods: The Bayanihan Spirit Between Filipino Farmers and Monash University

• Len Sangalang Tayco

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Climate crisis does not discriminate. But while worsening typhoons and droughts affect everyone across the globe, they do not impact all in the same way and with the same severity.

In an agricultural country like the Philippines where farming is the source of livelihood for many, natural calamities do not only damage crops but also risk property, animals and even families. With the country being particularly vulnerable to climate change impact because of its location, farmers, many of them landless and have had to endure many disasters on their own, are now even more hard-pressed amid more frequent and destructive typhoons and floods and longer periods of dry spell. It doesn’t help that they have limited to no capital to fund farming inputs and yet have to sell their crops at much lower prices.

These are the key issues highlighted at the “Feeling Climate Change to the Bone” webinar co-hosted by the Department of Management and Green Lab of Monash University. Inspired by experiences of people on the ground, the webinar held last September 6, 2023 tackled the stories of hardships, hope and resiliency of farmers and farmer groups and the power of community as they deal with the impact of climate change, in particular food security.

Hosted by Associate Professor Jagjit Plahe from the Monash Business School, the webinar put a spotlight on the members of MASIPAG (Magsasaka at Siyentipiko para sa Pag-unlad ng Agrikultura), a farmer-led network of landless agricultural workers, indigenous people, NGOs and scientists in the Philippines. Speakers from MASIPAG generously shared a glimpse into their lives, shedding light on the devastating effects of the climate crisis and discussing how they continue to battle this global problem.

The destruction of both crops and properties caused by stronger typhoons provided the context for one of the talks during the webinar. With the lack of proactive systems in place, losing crops and homes to floods caused by typhoons has become a universal story experienced by most local farmers. One of the speakers, Virginia ‘Nanay Virgie’ Prudente Nazareno, chairman of the MASIPAG board of trustees, shared how tropical depression Winnie and typhoon Yoyong left her family with almost nothing. Nanay Virgie recalled being in a daze for days after the devastation but realizing soon enough that she had to stand up together with her family and start anew.

While acknowledging the many challenges, the farmer-speakers from MASIPAG agreed there is always something that keeps farmers and agricultural groups from giving up. That something is the bayanihan spirit, the drive to build and support a community and ensure a better future for the farming industry. MASIPAG farmer-trainer and BAKAS (Buhi nga Aksyon para sa Kauswagan kag Pag-amlig sang Seguridad sang Mangunguma kag Mamumugon) leader Rodolfo F. Cortez Jr. said bayanihan has enabled them to create partnerships among farmers, scientists and NGOs to achieve common goals. Teaching sustainable agriculture practices, providing livelihood opportunities, opening community pantries to help others in times of need, and instilling a deep sense of solidarity and support for the community is bayanihan in action.

Alfie Palumbarit, national coordinator of MASIPAG and current head of the MASIPAG Climate Change Resiliency program, notes how climate change is not just a climate issue but a social justice concern as well. While the effects of climate change affect everyone, he says the impact is most severe among the most vulnerable such as those in developing countries.

As if natural disasters are not enough, farmers also face injustices in the form of threats, intimidation and violence. Many poor and landless farmers are taken advantage of, women face gender-based violence, and indigenous people are displaced and relocated to uninhabitable lands. Palumbarit also laments how technocentrism and current approaches to the climate crisis fail to really address the problem and instead allow developed nations and multinational corporations to further exploit the earth’s resources while developing countries are restricted in their development activities even as they suffer the brunt of the global problem.

Having been in collaboration with MASIPAG for six years now, Monash University believes in talking about and addressing climate change and its effects as these are experienced on the ground. In a study conducted by Monash University and the University of Newcastle on social movement organizations in the Philippines, Professor Sarah Wright, Future Fellow in geography and development studies at the University of Newcastle, highlighted the importance of co-developing stories and analyses with the ones most affected in order to better understand the complex issues of climate disaster.

Professor Gavin Jack, head of the Department of Management at Monash University, emphasized the importance of revisiting the climate change narratives and solutions from big corporations and developed nations, noting how technology-centric approaches are lacking. He highlighted instead the power of understanding local communities and grassroots experiences, adding that place-based solutions and actions rooted on the lived experiences of farmers should be the priority. Farmers are not simply passive receivers of help but rather partners in change and innovators, Jack notes.

“Market-based solutions, technological innovations from private corporations, while they may have some potential benefit, cannot solve climate change problems themselves. This technocentric view, this dominant framing, is a very partial way of understanding climate change,” shares Jack.

Reflecting on the issues discussed by Filipino farmers, Prof. Wright likewise pointed out the importance of hearing from people on the ground. She encouraged the webinar attendees to engage more deeply, listen more intently, think more openly and act with greater solidarity in the face of these challenges toward working for long-term solutions.

The webinar, attended by 50 participants from the Philippines and Australia, along with several studies, white papers and projects, is part of Monash University’s commitment to address climate disaster and support communities that suffer the most from it. The first Australian university to commit to net zero carbon emissions by 2030, Monash University strives to achieve a Net Zero renewable energy future. Empowering communities, maximizing the power of AI and partnering with groups to offer solutions are at the core of Monash University.

To access its studies and learn more about learning opportunities, visit Monash University’s official website.

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Monsoons in South Asia Essay

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Technically, the term monsoon is used to refer to the blowing of winds between the ocean and land, and the heavy rains that are associated with these winds. The winds blow in opposite directions in different seasons due to the reversed changes in the temperatures of the ocean and land.

South Asia is characterized with extensive land which teams up with the massive water area covered by the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea to form the Asian Monsoon. This monsoon is very strong and has adverse effects on climate in this area (Parker, 2007, p. 1). In this paper, we discuss the causes of the South Asian monsoons and explore their effects on the climate of this region.

There exists substantial controversy over the formation of monsoons but one thing is for sure; air pressure is a factor. With the above fact, therefore, the most plausible explanation to the formation of monsoons in South Asia is that pressure imbalances between the Indian Ocean and the Asian continent are the contributing factors (Arlblaster, 2010, p. 1).

That is, in summer, the air covering the Indian Ocean has a high pressure while that covering Asia has low pressure leading to the movement of air masses from the high pressured zone to the low pressured one i.e. movement of air masses from the ocean to land.

Since the air covering the Indian Ocean is moist during summer, South Asia receives moist air from this phenomenon. In the same way, during winter the pressure imbalance is reversed and thus the Indian Ocean is the one that is lowly pressured while the air over Tibetan Plateau is highly pressured and thus air moves from South of India and down the Himalayas towards the Indian Ocean.

The monsoons are, therefore, cyclic and they consist of both onshore and offshore winds. From the explanation above, it is apparent that the monsoon is parallel to convectional currents. Convectional currents can therefore be described as miniature monsoons (Rao, 1992, p. 34).

The convectional currents are characterized by movement of air currents between the ocean and land due to the different heating and cooling rates of the two. Other factors that contribute to the formation of monsoons are the westerlies and the trade winds that blow across South Asia (Parker, 2007, p. 1).

Geographers have been increasingly worried about the effect of the monsoons on climatic conditions. Most of them describe the monsoonal climate with one word; violent. This is used to describe the effects of the heavy monsoonal rains on the South Asian climate which is characterized by destructive floods, irregular rainfall changes, occasional extreme temperatures, storms and extensive erosion.

The irregular climate experienced in this region is a great challenge to agricultural activities in this area and therefore agronomists and planners constantly watch the weather to predict planting dates. Sometimes rains delay making farmers to either fail to sow seeds or plant few seeds.

Mostly, the rains come with great intensity accompanied by strong winds and they therefore destroy young plants and property. On the other hand, it is only recently that the people living in Monsoon Asia have been able to curb the effects of drought in this region. The monsoon climate has had adverse effects on the portion of the South Asian population occupying drought prone areas face extended periods of drought and famine in the recent past (Arlblaster, 2010, p. 1).

Approximately 50% of the world’s total populations are affected by the climate patterns that are caused by South Asian Monsoons (Arlblaster, 2010, p. 1). Most of these people are subsistence farmers and therefore adverse monsoonal climate changes have a great affect on their livelihoods. Excess or insufficient monsoonal rain could therefore translate to famine or flood in a number of regions depending entirely on the monsoonal climate for agriculture.

Wet monsoons occurring in June are very significant to India and Bangladesh, giving virtually all the water used in India. The monsoon rains also lead to waterborne diseases which affect the Indian population adversely. Children fail to attend classes while recovering from diseases like cholera, diarrhea and typhoid. The rains sometimes lead to flooding which kills people and displaces them, submerges infrastructure and halts businesses (Parker, 2007, p. 1).

The South Asian monsoons have evidently influenced climate in this region. They are responsible for rains and substantial changes in temperature that occur in this region. Additionally, storms have been repeatedly experienced in this area; courtesy of the monsoon winds. As earlier stated, these climatic influenced have had tremendous effects on the livelihoods of the inhabitants of South Asia.

Despite the negative effects that the monsoons in South Asia have had on the South Asian population, there are a number of benefits that come with them (Parker, 2007, p. 1). The monsoons are responsible for a good percentage of the rainfall experienced in the region and the floods associated with extended periods of rainfall fertilize the South Asian land.

Reference List

Arlblaster, J. (2010). The Asian Monsoon. Web.

Parker, J. (2007). What is the South Asia Monsoon? . Web.

Rao, S. (1992). The physics of monsoons . New York. Barnes & Noble.

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IvyPanda. (2018, July 8). Monsoons in South Asia. https://ivypanda.com/essays/monsoons-in-south-asia/

"Monsoons in South Asia." IvyPanda , 8 July 2018, ivypanda.com/essays/monsoons-in-south-asia/.

IvyPanda . (2018) 'Monsoons in South Asia'. 8 July.

IvyPanda . 2018. "Monsoons in South Asia." July 8, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/monsoons-in-south-asia/.

1. IvyPanda . "Monsoons in South Asia." July 8, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/monsoons-in-south-asia/.

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Monsoon Rains, Great Rivers and the Development of Farming Civilisations in Asia

Peter D. Clift, Jade d'Alpoim Guedes

Dealing with a warming world and providing enough food for a growing planet (and doing so in a sustainable fashion that is adapted to changing climate) is one of the key challenges humanity must face in coming decades. But what if some of the greatest resources for helping us deal with global warming already existed in plain sight?

Asia is one of the most densely populated areas of the world, with roughly 60% of the world’s population, most of whom are engaged in agricultural production systems which have historically been some of the most productive on the planet.  Asian farming systems have adapted to changes in an annual cycle of rainfall and changing temperatures known as the Asian monsoon. Although rainfall in South Asia may continue to be strong, we demonstrate how crops may still be harmed if high temperatures result in more evaporation and drier soils. Moreover, some of the extra rainfall may fall in the form of destructive storms rather than in more gradual rainfall that is more amenable to agricultural production. Reduction in summer monsoon rains is particularly acute in North China where predicted changes over the rest of the 21 st century imply significant challenges to farming.

What if the crops and systems of cultivation that hold the solution to changing climate already exist? Enter archaeology. Over the course of the past 11,000 years farmers across Asia have developed types of crops and cultivation systems that have allowed them to be resilient to past climate change. We argue that this wide range of strategies may prove to be our greatest asset as we face ongoing and future climatic change.

We use the past as a guide to the future to argue that it is these traditional methods of cultivation that might provide humanity’s best assets for confronting the uncertainties of climate change. In the recent past, agricultural reforms, such as the Green Revolution in South Asia and the Great Leap Forward in China, largely ignored the expertise accumulated by Asian farmers over the centuries and resulted in setbacks for production. Over the past 8000 years farming systems have been resilient to changes in rainfall because of their reliance on water from rivers. We review how farmers flexibly managed the cultivation of dryland crops like wheat, barley and millets in the face of changing rainfall and temperatures. We find that in some farming systems, like those of the Indus Valley Civilization, when conditions became too dry, people shifted cultivation towards arid tolerant crops like millet. In other regions, such as on the Tibetan plateau, a cold and dry climate event 4000 years ago made it impossible for farmers to continue to cultivating heat loving millets, and shifted their production to cold adapted crops like barley.

While these are well known to archaeologists some of the crops are not well known to the public. Yet these crops require very little water for their cultivation, are heat tolerant and may provide important adaptions for future global warming. Sadly, both the biodiversity of these crops as well as the knowledge of past cultivation systems are threatened by agricultural practices that have been imposed in the area.

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About The Authors

Peter D. Clift

Peter Clift is the Charles T. McCord Chair in Petroleum Geology at Louisiana State University. He is an affiliate faculty at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Yunnan Univer...

Jade d'Alpoim Guedes

Jade d'Alpoim Guedes is Associate Professor at the Department of Anthropology, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California. Jade is an environmental archaeologist...

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Responses of Filipino farmers to harsh weather phenomena: A risk perception and attitude study

Small-scale farmers, whose livelihood and food security greatly depends on farming, are constantly exposed and vulnerable to the risks of extreme weather events. The current study explored how the perception and attitude on agricultural risks of small-scale farmers from the upland, lowland and waterside ecosystems in Siniloan, Laguna in Philippines influence the way they respond and cope with extreme weather events. The study employed quantitative and qualitative data collection methods particularly farm surveys, focus group discussions, key informant interviews and secondary data from the office of the municipal agriculturist. The small-scale farmer-respondents recognised that they were exposed and at risk of extreme weather events and perceived climate as a major farming risk (85 %). However, pest and diseases (not climate) was perceived as the biggest risk to their production (94 %). The respondents had a risk-neutral attitude towards extreme weather events and tended to have ‘band-aid’ solutions to the impacts and tolerated the outcome. Based on correlation, the perceptions and attitudes of the small-scale farmers were influenced by socioeconomic factors that generally identified the experiences, roles and spending power of the farmer namely age, education, household size, income, land ownership, farm size and farming experience. The risk perception and risk attitude on various extreme weather events influenced the small-scale farmers’ agricultural practices, such as farm decisions. Therefore, risk perception, risk attitude and socioeconomic factors of the farmers are important factors to consider in risk management strategies for the local agricultural sector of the Philippines. Raising awareness and education on effective adaptation strategies and improved climate forecasting are recommended to minimize losses from extreme weather events.

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Filipinos, ask your questions on how to cope with the effects of climate change

Justine espina-letargo.

I thought that maybe when tropical storm ‘Ondoy’ (International Name: Ketsana) swept through the Southeast Asian region in 2009 and made landfall on the island of Luzon where Metro Manila is located, everyone would finally get a grip on reality. That actions need to be taken by everyone and not just put the blame on the usual suspects. The 9-hour deluge caught everyone off guard. A mother recounted to me how she painfully let boxes of memories -  baby pictures -  float away, amidst fast-rising flood waters. Social media and the television were awash with this image of a family holding on to each other and to dear life as they were swept under a bridge on the swollen Marikina river. Families all over the metropolis waited atop rooftops for days to be rescued, and for food drops from choppers flying overhead. Post-Ondoy, communities which lost their homes and livelihood have had to adjust and adapt in order to survive.  Beginning last week, the onset of the rainy season caused flash floods that again submerged many parts of Metro Manila. Many fear that if monsoon rains could already trigger flooding in a matter of minutes, what more with a typhoon? Do you know how many cyclones hit the country every year? Experts say that it’s between 7 to 8, but that they expect to see more violent storms come our way with a warming world. Why is Mindanao in southern Philippines, which didn’t see much weather disturbances in the past, now on the regular path of storms? Do you know that climate change is more than about the changes in our environment? That it also affects how people earn a living and our nation’s economy?

A warming world is upon us. What can we, as ordinary citizens do to adapt to lessen its negative impacts? These are simple, but important questions to ask. If you have any more, post them here or join the conversation on Twitter by sending your feedback to @worldbankasia or to @CCCommissionPh with hashtag #askCCC. Climate Change Commission Secretary Lucille L. Sering will answer five of your most pressing questions in a short video called   5 Questions in 5 Minute s to be posted on www.worldbank.org/ph in a few days Ask now!

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5 Ways Pinoy farmers and teachers are beating climate change

A carabao and farmer walk in the fields. Photo by Archie Binamira.

In the Philippines, it is not difficult to find a story about resourceful Filipinos who resiliently wade through flood waters and stay strong amidst adversity.

The same could be said for our farmers, who are on the receiving end of typhoons, droughts and other long-term effects of climate change .

The importance of agriculture and farming in the Philippines cannot be emphasized enough. According to the International Institute of Rural Reconstruction (IIRR), agriculture accounts for one-third of employment in the Philippines, making it a key sector.

“The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) estimates that the agricultural impacts of climate change would cost the country 26 billion pesos per year through 2050,” the IIRR reported. “Being a developing country, the Philippines cannot afford such big losses. Smallholder farmers are the most vulnerable and at risk to the impacts of climate change on livelihoods, food security , and nutrition in rural areas.”

Faced with these challenges, Pinoy farmers, public school teachers and non-government organizations (NGOs) are now using climate-smart agriculture (CSA) to mitigate the effects of climate change in the long run.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) describes CSA as an approach that helps to guide actions needed to transform and reorient agricultural systems. CSA practices can effectively support development and ensure food security in a changing climate.

“It is about three things: food security, climate adaptation and climate change mitigation,” according to Rene Vidallo, the Philippine Country Program Director of the IIRR. “Agriculture is affected by climate change impacts, but it is also a contributor to it.”

We’ve listed down a few CSA practices that are currently being adopted in the country, and how they are reducing the effects of climate change:

Multi-layer cropping

Mang Julian Aguilar grows a variety of vegetables through multi-layered cropping in his first farm. ( Photo: Angelica Y. Yang )

Mang Julian Aguilar, who has spent almost his entire life as a farmer, owns three hectares’ worth of farms in Barangay Litlit, Cavite. He has been working there since the ‘70s, and has observed and experienced the constant changing of climate.

“There are times when the weather can be very hot. There are other times where it can be very rainy. In the long run, my crops depend on the climate,” Aguilar shared.

He also said that like him, farmers in the area started out as rice farmers who ventured into other crops.

“In the ’70s and ’80s, this entire place was full of rice fields. [As the years went by], we started multi-cropping as we ventured into coffee beans. We thought of multi-cropping because it is a way to ensure that if one crop doesn’t survive, another will.”

Aside from coffee beans–which Aguilar supplies to big companies like Nestle–he has also expanded to other vegetables such as pechay, mustasa (mustard), banana, tomato, chili, papaya and cucumber.

According to the non-profit organization NETZ, multi-layer cropping is a resourceful agricultural technique. It involves planting creeper crops on trellis, over which mature vegetables or trees can be staked.

Native pig farming

“Globally, livestock is the biggest contributor of greenhouse gases at 40.5 percent. In the Philippines, pig production and processing [take up a bulk of GHG emissions],” Vidallo explained, in a lecture to journalists who visited the IIRR in Cavite.

According to a 2019 IIRR brief on Models for Empowering Women Livestock Producers, many consider keeping pigs as an expensive practice. Commercial feeds are costly, are subject to availability, and produce lower quality meat.

However, a group of pig farmers from Guinayangan, Quezon Province were able to find a cost-effective way to reduce GHG emission in raising native pigs.

“Instead of giving our pigs commercial feed, we use feeds made from a mixture of vegetables, water and soil,” said Gloria Macaraig, the President of the Guinayangan Native Pig Association, or GuiNaPig. “We use vegetables like kangkong , papaya, kamote , the stem of the banana, and some salt and sugar. We prefer that type of feed because it is not expensive.”

Macaraig added that more and more women were engaging in native pig farming, because they could easily make the organic feeds inside their homes while tending to other duties.

She shared that she is able to cultivate native pigs with organic feed, while working as a public servant in her barangay.

According to Macaraig, organic-fed native pigs are much leaner and meatier compared to commercially feed pigs. GuiNaPig found out about this when one of its members tried feeding native pigs with commercial feed.

“The pig fed with commercial feed grew really fast. It was sold at about 80 kilos. But the fat amounted to 20 kilos. Because of the quality of native pigs fed with organic feed, they sell more in the market at 150 Php per kilo, compared to commercial pigs at 120 Php per kilo.”

Mang Julian picks some chilis from a sili plant growing over a pile of mulching leaves. ( Photo: Angelica Y. Yang )

“Another source of GHG is the burning of leaves, a practice that farmers have long gotten used to. It’s very convenient for them, but the burning of leaves contributes carbon [to the atmosphere],” Vidallo stated.

Mang Julian Aguilar’s second farm, a vast expanse of trees and root crops, has benefited from mulching. Mulching is the re-integration of fallen leaves back into the soil by decomposition. The decomposed leaves act as a natural fertilizer that is neither expensive nor harmful to the environment.

“To prevent the soil from drying, we ‘mulch’ the leaves. It helps with the moisture,” Aguilar explained.

Vidallo added that mulching is more effective during the rainy season.

“It means that there is a lesser need for Mang Julian to apply [commercial] fertilizer. The lesser the fertilizer, the lesser greenhouse gas emission. This contributes to the national target of reducing emissions,” he said.

School gardens

Marie Ann Galas talks about how Tinabunan Elementary School and other neighboring schools find joy in “exchanging seeds” of different crops. ( Photo: Angelica Y. Yang )

What better way is there to introduce farming and agriculture to kids than to have them experience it firsthand in a learning environment? That’s what Tinabunan Elementary School in Imus, Cavite, is doing.

The public school is very proud of its garden and greenhouse, with both being “learning laboratories” for its Gulayaan sa Paaralan (GFP) program for elementary students.

“The beauty about this is its extension to the community. Many children and even their parents are interested in planting vegetables in their own homes. There was even a case when a kid asked for some seeds from the teacher, so he could plant it in his home,” shared Marie Ann Galas, the school’s garden coordinator.

Galas said that the children’s exposure to agriculture at a young age makes them appreciate it all the more. She believes that interacting with plants at school educates the children in the process.

One of the pathways that snake through the extensive Tinabunan Gulayaan sa Paaralan Crops Museum. ( Photo: Angelica Y. Yang )

Healthy feeding program

The school uses the vegetables from its garden to sustain its feeding program for malnourished students.

Every day, the school holds the feeding program inside a colorful pink cafeteria with small benches and wall paintings that promote healthy eating.

The food pyramid for kids overlooks the small benches where Tinabunan Elementary School beneficiaries eat their healthy lunches. ( Photo: Angelica Y. Yang )

“The feeding program helps our kids,” said the school’s principal, Jesus Borgado. “During the school year 2016 to 2017, there were about 200 kids. At present, there are only 9 [malnourished] kids. The number went down because of their knowledge of the benefits of vegetables from our GFP program.”

The 10 “ Kumainments ” are painted on the wall of the cafeteria where the Tinabunan Healthy Feeding Program is held. ( Photo: Angelica Y. Yang )

According to Borgado, because of the kids’ clamor for vegetables in their packed lunches, parents are now incorporating them into every meal they make, instead of the usual hotdog and rice.

Thanks to the school’s GFP and feeding programs, the IIRR named it a ‘Sentinel School’ in 2016.

The Tinabunan Elementary School, an IIRR-recognized Sentinel school, follows the Integrated School Nutrition Model. ( Photo: Angelica Y. Yang )

Sentinel schools are pioneers across Region IV-A in integrating the school nutrition model. It is a three-pronged approach towards addressing malnutrition among school children through gardening, supplementary feeding and nutrition education. —MF

This article first appeared in www.flipscience.ph . Read it here .

T he field trip was organized by VERA Files as part of the project supported by the Internews’ Earth Journalism Network, which aims to empower journalists from developing countries to cover the environment more effectively.

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Filipino farmers struggle as drought and heatwave hit vast swathes of crop lands

MANILA – Filipino farmer Daniel Velasco pumps water from a well in a desperate attempt to save his wilting vegetables, as a scorching heatwave and the worst drought in years hit crops.

It has hardly rained on Mr Velasco’s plot of gourds and tomatoes since November, as the El Nino weather phenomenon brings drier conditions and baking temperatures.

“I’m losing a lot of money,” Mr Velasco, 57, said, standing barefoot on the cracked ground in the northern Philippine province of Nueva Ecija.

His gourds “died before I could even sell them”, pushing him deeper into debt.

El Nino is a naturally occurring climate pattern typically associated with increased heat worldwide, leading to drought in some parts of the world and heavy rains elsewhere.

Unusually hot weather has blasted South and South-east Asia for the past week, forcing schools to send children home and the authorities to issue health warnings.

Global temperatures hit record highs in 2023, and the United Nations’ weather and climate agency said last week that Asia was warming at a particularly rapid pace.

More than half of the Philippines’ provinces, including Nueva Ecija, are in drought as El Nino exacerbates hot and dry conditions typical for March, April and May.

Temperatures have sizzled around 40 deg C in parts of the country in recent days, with the heat index – what the temperature feels like, taking into account humidity – in one area hitting 53 deg C.

‘Up against nature’

In the Philippines, which ranks among the countries most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, the upcoming harvest is likely to be “below average”, the UN has warned.

Crop losses are estimated at more than four billion Philippine pesos (S$94.3 million), and farmers face further hardship if the drought does not break soon.

It is hoped rain in mid-May will bring some relief, but drier than normal conditions could persist until August, Ms Ana Solis, chief climatologist at the state weather forecaster, said.

Mr Joey Villarama, spokesman for the government’s Task Force El Nino, said the current conditions were comparable with the drought during the 1997-1998 El Nino, the country’s worst-ever dry spell.

“We are up against nature,” Mr Villarama said. “It’s very difficult because it’s unpredictable.”

Like Mr Velasco, many farmers in Nueva Ecija normally count on the Pantabangan Dam for irrigation, but levels have fallen nearly 50m and it no longer reaches their fields.

The receding water forced two hydropower plants to shut earlier than usual, worsening already strained electricity supplies, as people crank up air conditioners and fans to cool off.

Some farmers like Mr Velasco switched from rice to vegetables, which need less water, but even those are dying.

Mr Velasco said his January harvest was halved by insufficient rain, and those that he did pick were too small to sell at the market.

Now, the groundwater is drying up.

It takes Mr Velasco three times as long to draw water from the well as it did before.

He worries how he will cope if the rains do not come soon and his well dries up – as others around have done.

“Farming is my only way to earn a living,” he said, fearing he would slip deeper into debt and be unable to send his youngest child to school. “If there’s no water, how can I continue?“

His neighbour, Mr Eddie Balagtas, 69, is also struggling.

“I just wasted my effort,” Mr Balagtas said, removing his shrivelled watermelon vines on his 1ha farm.

“If you don’t have other sources of income, there’s no choice but to borrow money,” Mr Balagtas said, praying for rain so that he could plant a crop of rice. “It’s hard.”

‘Why is this happening?’

Rice farmers in drought-stricken Occidental Mindoro province, south of the main island of Luzon, have started to receive financial assistance.

“You could push your fist through the cracks, that’s how severe it is for the rice farms,” said Ms Daisy Leano, information officer for San Jose town.

As dam levels drop, some urban areas have been left without water.

More than 100 cities and municipalities have declared the drought a state of calamity to access emergency funds.

Fire engines have been deployed in neighbourhoods of Bacolod city in the central province of Negros Occidental to deliver water to residents.

“I ask myself: Why is this happening to us?” said Ms Dolores Bauya, 54, who lines up at least once a week to receive the free water.

In the central province of Cebu, Ms Har Tabalino, 24, said she has to pump water from a well in another village to cook and bathe, after water from a nearby dam stopped.

“I think this is the hottest and the longest (dry) season I have ever experienced, that it actually affected my everyday life,” she said. AFP

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Gauging the Impact of Warming On Asia’s Life-Giving Monsoons

By Christina Larson • August 20, 2012

Bouncing along bad roads in a jeep through central Mongolia, with bright blue skies and high clouds overhead, we drive for miles through a treeless landscape, passing only dry grasslands dotted with cattle and white yurts. But as we head north — myself, two U.S. scientists, and one Mongolian forestry expert — we begin to notice Siberian pine and larch growing on the northern slopes of rolling hills, but not the southern slopes, and at some elevations, but not others. In water-scarce Mongolia, as my travel companion Neil Pederson of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory explained, the precarious growth of trees is limited by temperature and moisture availability; small variations — northern slopes are slightly cooler and wetter — can make all the difference. Our destination is a 30-square-kilometer lava field in north central Mongolia, where a volcano oozed magma some 7,000 years ago. The pockmarked black surface looks like a moonscape, with only a few scraggly trees and dry deadwood littering the ground. But this is precisely what has brought Pederson and his colleagues to Mongolia since 1995 — the ability to sample long-lived, slowly decaying trees, some dating back more than 1,300 years. By examining ancient tree rings, Pederson and a research partner at West Virginia University, Amy Hessl, can glean information about historic rainfall patterns, as pines grow more in wet years. By piecing together this data, Pederson and other scientists from Lamont-Doherty hope to shed light on a vital question: How will climate change affect Asia’s life-sustaining monsoons, which control the seasonal

Recent evidence suggests monsoons are weakening, whereas climate models predict strengthening.

‘Livelihoods, water security, and energy security are all tied to the volume and timely arrival of monsoon season,’ says one scientist.

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