El Niño weakening, but we’re not out of the woods yet
IN its latest update, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) reported that the prevailing El Niño is gradually weakening after peaking in November to January. There is a 60-percent chance of El Niño conditions persisting in March through May, the WMO noted. Still, the newest forecast is much less dire than the projection last year that the weather phenomenon could last until the second quarter of this year.
The El Niño we are experiencing now may be less severe than what we went through in 2016 and 2019, but it doesn’t mean that the country has been spared from its devastating effects.
The National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council has reported P1.05 billion in agricultural damage from El Niño.
Drought and dry spell conditions have parched 17,718 hectares of farmlands, with Western Visayas being the hardest hit, absorbing P678.7 million in crop losses.
Bulalacao town in Oriental Mindoro, which is in the midst of a scorching dry spell, has declared a state of calamity. So has Zamboanga City, where drinking water is already being rationed.
In Negros Occidental, six barangay (villages) have been struggling with a shortage of drinking and irrigation water since December.
The water level in dams supplying Metro Manila continues to recede and could become critical once summer sets in. The region is also bracing for a heat wave, with temperatures predicted to soar to 34 degrees Celsius.
Forest fires fueled by extremely dry conditions are raging in Benguet. The El Niño may be on the wane, but we haven’t dodged the bullet yet. At least 275,000 hectares of rice fields, producing an estimated yield of 1.1 million metric tons of palay (unmilled rice), are under threat from El Niño, according to the Department of Agriculture.
The losses in agriculture could have the biggest impact on the economy. According to the World Bank, it could affect “downstream agricultural processing, input production and agriculture-related trading and transporting.”
Because over a quarter of the country’s workforce is in the farm sector, “any shocks to agriculture lead to reverberations across the entire economy, with serious implications on welfare, food security and national poverty levels,” the World Bank said.
Following the 2016 El Niño, the government drew up the Roadmap to Address the Impact of El Niño, or RAIN. In the World Bank’s assessment, while the program was successful in stabilizing food prices and supplies, government agencies could have responded faster in addressing water scarcity and drought aid delivery.
More efficient forecasting systems could have given farmers more time to save their crops, the World Bank said.
Following the first alert in March of a strong El Niño, the Marcos administration announced a National Action Plan to “increase resiliency of communities.”
The plan focuses on five key sectors that will bear the brunt of the weather phenomenon: water supply, agriculture, energy, health and public safety.
Among the proposed interventions are an intensified water conservation effort, maintaining a stable supply of basic food commodities, minimizing power interruptions, and a close monitoring and reporting of El Niño-related disease outbreaks.
The public needs to know if the plan has been fully implemented. Initiatives like offering P25,000 in interest-free loans to affected farmers and fisherfolk are commendable, but there are no available figures on how many have applied for the loans and how many applications have been approved.
As part of the government’s El Niño response, P31.18 billion has been earmarked in the 2024 national budget for irrigation projects. We wonder how many of those projects are underway, considering that the budget was approved only last December.
The Agriculture department had planned to build more water-impounding systems and even solar-powered irrigation. The El Niño may be over before any of these projects could get off the ground.
The department assures that rice stocks are adequate, but added that rice prices could change from day to day.
The lack of foresight and sense of urgency could reduce what is a comprehensive strategy to cushion the effects of El Niño into a package of stopgap measures that defeats the objective to increase the resiliency of communities.