Climate Change Projections for Local Planning in Philippines

While there is a growing number of information on climate change, hazards, and adaptation in the Philippines, what has proven difficult is the application or mainstreaming of this information in local planning within the policy context of the Philippines. This study applies and translates climate change projections available from the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) and other sources into the local plans of the cities of Batangas, General Santos, Legazpi, Puerto Princesa, and Tagbilaran.

The study was done through a synthetic climate change impact and consequence assessment targeting the specific sectoral characteristics of each of the cities. Synthetic in this study means not a direct development of index or statistical computations but the use of available data such as matching the current characteristics of the area in relation to the PAGASA projections. The sectors assessed are Demography, Social, Economic, Infrastructure, and Environment as prescribed by the Housing Land Use Regulatory Board (HLURB) Guidebook in updating and mainstreaming Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) and Disaster Risk Reduction and Management (DRRM) to the Comprehensive Land Use Plan (CLUP) of the cities.

The assessment was done by firstly profiling the cities, describing their current physical environment, land cover, land use, socio-economic characteristics, and current climate and hazard vulnerabilities by incorporating these in a Geographic Information System (GIS) as layers. These layers will be overlaid with the regional downscaled projections of temperature and precipitation as generated by PAGASA. These data on climate projections were shared by the agency for the conduct of this study.

An overlay analysis was then conducted, identifying the impacts to the different layers as described in literature. The overlay analysis was supplemented by other literature sources such the reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Philippine Climate Change Assessment (PHILCCA) reports describing the impacts of climate change in particular sectors of the cities. Adaptation options were drawn from the results of the impact analysis, targeting sectors and barangays for each city which will be most affected by the changes in temperature and precipitation.

The study seeks to facilitate in the mainstreaming of climate change adaptation through the proposed methodology. The results of the impact assessment were designed to be easily integrated into the local land use plans and local climate change adaptation plans. The use of readily available data while considering the policy context of the cities provides a framework that can be used by other cities within the same context.