According to former Vice President of the United States Al Gore, global warming is the observed and projected increase in the average temperature of Earth’s atmosphere and oceans. It is a complex phenomenon, and its full-scale impacts are hard to predict far in advance.
It is bad because in the most likely scenarios, climate change would cause some kind of regional or continental disruption, like a major crop failure; this disruption would cascade through the world’s tightly connected economic and political systems to produce a global effect. It can cause an economically critical region to exhaust its water reserves. The severe weather events that occurred have had major effects on international politics, commodity markets and the stability of various regions. Millions of people have died or have been homeless and lost their livelihoods as results of these natural disasters.
Cause of global warming
Global warming is caused by many things. The causes are split up into two groups, man-made and natural causes. One natural cause is the release of methane gas from arctic tundra and wetlands. Methane is a greenhouse gas. A greenhouse gas is a gas that traps heat in the earth’s atmosphere.
Another natural cause is that the earth goes through a cycle of climate change. Man-made causes probably do the most damage. Pollution is one of the biggest man-made problems. Burning fossil fuels is one thing that causes pollution. Fossil fuels are those made of organic matter such as coal or oil. When fossil fuels are burned, they give off a greenhouse gas called CO2. Also mining coal and oil allows methane to escape. When you dig up the fossil fuels, you dig up the methane as well.
Another major man-made cause of global warming is population. More people mean more food, and more methods of transportation. That means more methane because there will be more burning of fossil fuels, and more agriculture. Another source of methane is manure. Another problem with the increasing population is transportation. More people mean more cars and more cars mean more pollution. The main cause of global warming is our treatment of nature. There are many evidences that support global warming.
Creating uncertainties
Global warming creates uncertainties for the Philippine economy. The Philippines is known as one of the most hazard-prone countries in the world. Disasters brought upon by global warming derailed economic development of the country as funds are reallocated from ongoing programs to finance relief and reconstruction assistance.
Soaring food prices are one of the ill effects of global warming to the Philippine economy. Food price inflation severely stresses the most vulnerable groups. High food prices are undermining the gains of poverty reduction efforts in the Philippines and will make the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goal (SGD) 1, No Poverty, difficult. Food price inflation may have seriously eroded their purchasing power, increasing the severity of food deprivation and malnutrition. These effects will worsen if the food price surge persists.
It is now a big challenge for the government to maintain a stable income for its people despite of price inflation. Through this, people will be able to supply their basic needs without severely compromising their budget.
Linking poverty
In the case of the Philippines, linkages between poverty and vulnerability to natural hazards are clearly evident. Despite this, however, and despite government’s central objective to reduce poverty, efforts to reduce vulnerability to natural hazards are not systematically included as a central component of the government’s poverty reduction strategy.
To summarize, I believe the main challenge here is to reduce poverty. Poverty is still largely a rural phenomenon. Filipinos have high dependence on agriculture where productivity has been declining due to frequent flooding and storm devastation.
Population pressures and a declining natural resource base have exacerbated these problems. To alleviate poverty, the Philippines has to not only overcome the effects brought upon global warming to its economy but also have sound policies to address global warming itself. The signing of the landmark Paris Agreement on Climate Change by President Rodrigo Duterte is a hopeful sign that we are willing to address what former Environment Secretary Gina Lopez called “the single greatest threat facing our planet.”
The author is an MBA student at the Ramon V. del Rosario College of Business. This essay is part of a journal he kept in fulfillment of the requirements of the course, Lasallian Business Leadership with Corporate Social Responsibility and Ethics. Visit his blog at https://erictinio.wordpress.com/.
The views expressed here are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the official position of DLSU, its faculty and administrators.