Floods

It is either we are having a really bad La Niña year or climate change is now irreversible.

Scientists are telling us that the unusually low temperatures we saw in North America and Europe, causing the chaos of heavy snowfall, is actually a function of global warming. The warming of the Arctic region causes the circulation of cold winds to extend much farther south. The heavy snowfall and unusually low temperatures are in fact results of the more dispersed circulation of Arctic winds.

The severe winter will be short, however. The rapid warming will, in turn, cause the large amounts of snow on the ground to melt quickly and cause flooding. We are now seeing this happening in Northern Europe: many German towns are now under water.

Meanwhile, close to the Equator, weather patterns associated with La Nina appear to have become a lot more severe. Heavy rains have inundated large regions extending from Northeastern Australia to Sri Lanka to Brazil.

We know the weather has been, well, unseasonal to say the least. From the Bicol region down to Eastern Visayas and Eastern Mindanao, the rains have not let up. Towns are submerged. Landslides have happened. The casualty toll is rising.

Our own weather authorities say the volume of rain that fell over the Bicol region, Samar, Leyte and the Surigao provinces match the volume of rain that fell over Northeastern Australia. The larger Australian land mass explains the dramatic swelling of rivers and inundation of large cities. But we have not been spared the calamitous outcomes either. In fact, our death toll from the floods is now higher than Australia’s.

Weathermen tell us that the present La Niña phenomenon will persist well into May this year. The record shows that La Niña ends in the Philippines about three weeks after the phenomenon terminates elsewhere. That means that the La Nina effects will spill into our regular typhoon season that begins in June.

The rains of the past few weeks produced calamitous results. The slopes are holding too much water. The watersheds are bloated. The lakes are full.

If we are looking at several more weeks of downpour, the scale of the disaster we are now experiencing could rise sharply. More communities will be in peril. The damage to infrastructure and agriculture could spiral.

The forecasts are compelling. We know what is coming. What is not known is what the authorities are doing to prepare, what the plans are to mitigate the misery this will bring our people.

The President is due to visit the ravaged communities. That is almost a matter of protocol.

The pertinent government agencies along with civic-minded groups will be distributing relief goods the worst-hit communities. That is to be expected.

No one, however, has unveiled a comprehensive plan for dealing with the comprehensive calamity the forecasts suggest. Are we ready to evacuate tens of thousands of people? Are we ready to cover the probable losses in agriculture resulting to continuing flooding of our fields? Are the evacuation centers ready and the hospitals adequately equipped to cope?

We do not know really. The authorities are telling us nothing.

Because we are told nothing, we cannot be reassured. What we know is that national government response to the flood-stricken provinces has been insufficient. The communities are basically left to fend for themselves. The local governments are overwhelmed.

Should more rains fall, the calamity could quickly scale up. The extent of unpreparedness will be more evident. The weaknesses of our institutions and the paucity of leadership will serve to magnify the miseries that climate change threatens to bring.

Index

This is not very encouraging: the Philippines’ economic freedom ranking has significantly deteriorated according to the latest report.

The Palace responds to the news with a default response: blame the previous administration. As in most other things, we are not told what the present administration intends to do about this. Do we have a comprehensive program to improve our economy’s capacity to be more competitive?

It is not just that we are falling behind the others. The others are also moving up the rankings quickly by doing the policy reforms that need to be done to make their economies competitive.

True, corruption is an important factor undermining our competitiveness. It raises the costs of doing business. So do a thousand other things, ranging from the cost of power, constitutional prohibitions on investment, the inefficient organization of the bureaucracy, idiosyncratic laws passed by our Congress such as the indigenous peoples’ rights act, the poor quality of our educational system, the extensive reliance on public subsidies which constantly threatens to push us into debt, blatant protectionism and horrible agricultural policies.

We have been promised reforms but treated only to the most general statements about them. No visible strategy has been unveiled. No passion to reorganize and reinvent government is seen. No sense of urgency is felt.

If we want to impress the global investment community, we must offer a convincing package and timetable of reforms organized principally around raising our competitiveness. To date, the Philippines’ share of direct investment flows into the region remains miniscule. At the rate things are going, we will be the regional laggard, strapped by uninspired leadership, political stalemate and bureaucratic demoralization.

Time is our biggest enemy. Here we are losing out.

In the six months since a new administration took over, the Legislative-Executive Development Advisory Council has not even been convened. The full Cabinet does not meet. There is a growing sense there is little conviction to get comprehensive changes done — simply because it requires too much work.