Climate change behind twin disasters in RP – UN official

Contrary to Filipino experts’ diagnosis, climate change should be blamed for the two recent tropical cyclones that devastated the country, a top United Nations official said.

UN Undersecretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator John Holmes said tropical storm “Ondoy" (Ketsana) and typhoon “Pepeng" (Parma) are the clearest manifestations that the problems of climate change are here. “Climate change is already causing more and more disasters and extreme weather events and we’re seeing extreme weather events in Asia and Africa," Holmes said. According to Holmes, climate change should no longer be a topic for future discussions but a reality that people need to adapt to in the present. “Climate change is a current threat," he said. Storm Ondoy’s heavy rains last September 26 may not be linked to climate change, according to experts like Manila Observatory’s Rosa Perez and Rodel Lasco of the World Agroforestry Center. Perez and Lasco, who are members of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said they could not yet say the cause of Ondoy’s excessive rainfall was a change in the statistical distribution of weather over periods of time. “We cannot say from a single event that this is climate change. However, there is a very likely scenario that there would be more heavy precipitation events and there will be an increase of tropical cyclone activity," Lasco said. Ondoy and Pepeng, which were just a week apart when they battered the country, poured record rainfall in Luzon that caused massive flooding and landslides. The National Disaster Coordinating Council, pegged the total death toll from the two tropical cyclones at 650. - Joseph Holandes Ubalde, GMANews.TV