TODAY, we close the book on 2024, our eyes on the board where the country’s ledger details how this country stood up to the challenges and concerns.
Fittingly, we need to review the strengths and weaknesses as 2025 walks in, and gear up appropriately to meet these challenges, hell bent on addressing them with the determination to succeed.
Definitely several have provoked the unity and capacity of the Filipino people to stand united, as witness their sturdiness and common stand in face of calamities and threats on their territory, stoicism in face of biting poverty, and intimidating inflation, among others.
We see an alarming chapter on climate change, where the Philippines, an archipelagic country of 117 million, is not immune to, surrounded as it is by water and pummeled by an average unforgiving 20 typhoons each year.
With 60 percent of the country’s cities along the coast, including its capital Manila, climatologists have said, and we underline their observation, the country is especially vulnerable to sea level rise and its impacts.
Weathercasters have noted a rapid sea level rise here. In Manila alone, with nearly two million population, the sea level has increased about 2.6 centimeters per year, which is faster than the global average.
The Philippines is one of the countries most affected by rising sea levels, rising 7-10 centimeters per decade along the coast – three times faster than the global average, according to climatologists.
Experts say the rate of sea level rise globally has more than doubled since the 20th century, from 0.06 inches (1.4 millimeters) per year to 0.14 inches (3.6 millimeters) per year from 2006 to 2015.
An Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has projected that oceans will rise to 4 feet by the end of the century, and rising levels threaten the stability of countries’ boundaries and pose risks to international peace and security.
With its position on the west side of the Pacific, the Philippines finds itself vulnerable to climate impacts, including tropical cyclones, flooding, landslides, changes in rainfall patterns and distribution , droughts, threats to biodiversity and food security, public health risks, endangerment of vulnerable groups like women and indigenous people, and sea level rise.
It also experiences erosion, which can damage infrastructure, destroy crops, and lead to loss of life; its natural resources are critical for protecting against climate change, but they are also being depleted.
It faces an energy crisis as its natural gas supply is rapidly being depleted, and has its coral reefs, vital for marine biodiversity and tourism, affected by warming oceans and ocean acidification.
We know the Philippines has taken some steps to address climate change, including setting a moratorium on new coal, launching a green energy auction, considering a 50 percent electric vehicle stock target by 2040, and creating new bamboo and cocoa plantations.
We hope success will bless the country in the years ahead.
