Philippine Climate Change: Insights from Related Literature
The Philippines is one of the most vulnerable nations where one can observe and project the impacts of climate change. Climate change-induced temperature increases and rainfall variability are considered most likely to have the greatest impacts on the country. The frequency and intensity of tropical cyclones originating in the Pacific are also increasing, albeit not definitive, and three of the highest recorded maximum gustiness occurred in this country in the last two decades, including Typhoon Haiyan. In this climate change in the Philippines essay will be an attempt to reveal this urgent issue.
Studies found that climate change will continue to expose the vulnerabilities of the ecosystems, freshwater resources, coastal systems, agriculture, and fisheries in the Philippines, as well as human health. It was observed and projected that climate change affected, and will continue to affect increases in diseases' particularly vector- and waterborne diseases as well as heat-related illnesses.
In 2015, the Philippine Government spent a total of 2.83 million USD for climate change adaptation (98%, 2.73 million USD) and mitigation (2%, 0.063 million USD). These were allocated to food security (3%), water sufficiency (54%), the ecology and environment (8%), human security (5%), climate-smart industries (0.4%), sustainable energy (26%), knowledge and capacity development (1.8%), and finance (0.8%). None had been allocated for health or spent under the health sector.
The lack of attention to the impacts of climate change on health was picked up by the Philippine National Health Research System (PNHRS), who included it in the National Unified Health Research Agenda 2017-2022 as one of the core topics under the Health Resiliency section. To help map out and elaborate the current extent of this research field, a research agenda setting was conducted in 2018. As part of the agenda-setting process, a scoping review was done to help elaborate on and generate possible research themes and priorities for funding, and this paper presents the results of the review.
Since scoping reviews can be an arduous, yet transparent method for mapping research areas, some recently used it as either a stand-alone or supplementary tool in agenda-setting in various fields in health research. Montesanti et al. used it as a sole tool in generating key research themes in primary health care in Canada to contribute to the efficient and equitable use of limited funding, and possibly reduced duplication. Alternatively, Ajumobi et al. used a scoping review in developing introductory materials to guide the consultative process in setting Nigeria's national malaria operational research agenda.
In the field of climate change and health, Hosking and Campbell-Lendrum used a scoping review to generate an overview of the entire field of climate change and health guided by the World Health Assembly priorities as a framework, including:
- assessing risks,
- identifying effective and cost-effective interventions,
- measuring the co-benefits and co-harms of adaptation and mitigation,
- improving decision support,
- estimating costs.
Recently, a more rigorous scoping review methodological framework for climate change and health was developed by Herlihy et al. to examine historical trends and provide a more extensive and inclusive overview of existing scientific literature on climate change and health based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) framework.
In conclusion to essay about climate change in the Philippines, the purpose of this paper was to present an overview of the existing literature on climate change and health research in the Philippines.
