Climate change, disasters and cooperatives

Every time a destructive typhoon wreaks havoc in the country, our policymakers and media practitioners are quick to issue a litany of observations, pointing out the destruction of our forest covers and watersheds, siltation of our rivers and other water bodies due to severe soil erosion, and illegal settlers’ occupation of hazardous areas as the main culprits behind the enormous damage, both in terms of lives and properties that we suffer. That was the case in the aftermath of the flashflood and landslide that occurred in Ormoc, Leyte, killing thousands of victims in 1991, when Typhoon “Ondoy” hit Metro Manila in 2009, when “Pablo” struck Mindanao in 2012, “Yolanda” destroyed Western Visayas in 2013, and now “Ulysses” in 2020.

After a few months, this blame game will surely be forgotten and as a nation, we will move forward by reverting to our “business as usual” ways. At least this time, our level of analytical sophistication has risen a little bit because besides those cliché observations regarding the causes of flooding and landslides, we added the concern of “climate change” as another reason for our woes. We have at least become global in our perspective since climate change is now a fashionable concern in global development thinking.