Reporting IPCC findings: Online media sound the alarm on climate change in the PH

CHEERS TO online media for highlighting the alarm sounded by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and for reporting the precise significance of its findings for the Philippines.

The IPCC published on August 9 its latest comprehensive report on the state of the global climate, and the threats and challenges confronting the world. Eight years after its last update, the 4000-page report, written by more than 200 authors, serves as a wake-up call on the grim future if the current trajectory of carbon emissions persists. IPCC revealed that regardless of the efforts we make today, climate disasters such as catastrophic floods and droughts will inevitably plague the country over the next 30 years as global sea levels continue to rise.

The country’s coastal communities throughout the national territory face the Pacific Ocean and the West Philippine Sea on either side of our islands. Additionally, the Philippines lies at the center of the typhoon belt and sits on shifting tectonic plates. Limited media attention is indicative of the failure to grasp the relevance of the IPCC report. Sure, the warnings have been heard before. Perhaps, media’s dependence on official sources in government explains this severe lapse.

Primetime newscasts failed completely to note the release of the report. With the exception of the Manila Bulletin, the major daily broadsheets ignored the IPCC report. Most online news on IPCC’s sobering revelations were limited to accounts picked up from international wire agencies.

But a few media organizations stood out for providing views from local experts, carrying the calls of environmental groups and resource persons who gave the issue some much needed depth and analysis.

Rappler Talk Newsmaker featured an interview with Manila Observatory executive director Father Jett Villarin on August 11. Villarin, who has contributed to past IPCC reports himself, said that at the rate the world is going, it is likely that the world will warm by 1.5 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial times. He offered a simpler explanation of what this means by recalling the intensity of recent supertyphoons such as Yolanda (Haiyan), Rolly (Goni) and Ulysses (Vamco).

“The category four and five, the strong typhoons, they will be a common feature in a warmer world. Something like a 100-year typhoon will now come once every 50 years or once every 10 years,” Villarin said.

On the same day, meteorologist and climatologist Lourdes Tibig stressed the severe impact of climate change on coastal communities in an interview with Mike Navallo for ANC’s The Rundown. “Imagine what that coastal island would look like, say, in 2050….That coastal island would be submerged almost the whole year. It would be totally submerged in water if (sea level rise is,) rather climate change is not really decelerated,” she said.

Manila Bulletin and Philstar.com also picked up statements from several environmental groups pressing government for more urgent climate action.

In two separate reports, The Bulletin cited Power for People Coalition (P4P) and Youth Advocates for Climate Action Philippines (YACAP) which criticized the country’s preference for dirty energy sources like coal and emphasized the country’s high risk for aggravated effects of climate change, being “one of the most affected countries on the planet.”

Philstar.com, for its part, collected the views of several other green groups that share the urgency of government action: The Manila-based NGO, Institute for Climate and Sustainable Cities, highlighted the need to underscore climate change’s “existential risks to millions of Filipinos.” Greenpeace Southeast Asia and Climate Reality Project Philippines underlined the proof provided by the report for “what we already know from experience” and that “doing nothing means being complicit in burning our planet down.” Greenpeace Philippines and the Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development renewed the call to address the climate crisis.  The latter noted the need for “massive ecological restoration” and drastic changes required from high carbon-emitting industries and technologies.

Media discourse should move from the global report to engage more focused discussion on other measures to protect coastlines and remaining forest stands, and  lifestyle changes that involve a “whole of nation” approach. They cannot wait for government to make the first move.