Philippines
Overview
Constituting 32 percent of the labour force and 11.3 percent of GDP, the agricultural sector plays an important role in the the Philippines’ economy. Farming and fisheries are the most important subsectors with livestock and forestry making smaller contributions. All are being affected by floods, typhoons, landslides, and droughts that are induced and intensified by climate change.
Approximately 60 percent of the country’s 1 500 municipalities and 120 cities are coastal, exacerbating the impacts of the already significant threats of rainfall variability, storm surges, and sea level rise. Due to its high vulnerability to the impacts of climate change, the Philippines is at the forefront of climate change adaptation and is seeking to generate more public and private investment in agricultural infrastructure.
Adaptation policies
Prior to the inception of the NAP-Ag Programme in the Philippines, a number of national initiatives to increase resilience to climate change were already underway. The Climate Change Commission (CCC) formulated a National Climate Change Action Plan (NCCAP), which is now informing the NAP activities, and serves as the NAP itself. It outlines adaptation and mitigation strategies based on seven thematic areas.
The Philippines is also welcoming the NAP-Ag to fill in the gaps in its national programme on Adaptation and Mitigation in Agriculture (AMIA), specifically in increasing access to external climate finance. The AMIA is already making progress towards mainstreaming climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction into national plans.
NAP-Ag activities
Since 2016, NAP-Ag support in the Philippines has been aimed at deepening a number of priority areas: greater integration of climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction into agriculture sector plans and operations; enhanced understanding on landscape-based adaptation planning; better integration of national and local adaptation planning for the agriculture sectors; improved forecasting for crops and fisheries; and improved capacity for prioritizing, monitoring and evaluating gender-sensitive adaptation options for the agriculture sectors.
Monitoring and Evaluation
A workshop on M&E of climate change adaptation in the agricultural sector was delivered in October 2018 to advance on the conceptualization of an M&E system to track adaptation for adaptation planning and reporting under the UNFCCC. Its development is led by the Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology and Environmental Studies (IDEAM) as a secretary of the National System of Climate Change (SISCLIMA), and is going to be used to monitor the implementation and results of the AFMP.
Review of domestic data sources for climate finance
The objective of this study was to better understand how much the countries were allocating to climate change through their national expenditures.