5 Climate Change in the Philippines 5.1 Background Philippines As an archipelagic nation, the Philippines is under severe threat of climate change. The inhabitants, nature, and infrastructure of the country make it one of the most vulnerable to the impacts of the changing climate and associated weather extremes (e.g. tropical cyclones) and other natural hazards (Emanuel, 2005; Ueda and Hori, 2006; Meheux et al., 2007, Yusuf and Francisco, 2009). The Philippines is situated in Southeast Asia (SEA) between the South China Sea and the Philippine Sea. The archipelago consists of more than 7000 islands, with a total size of roughly 300.000 km² and a combined coastline of more than 36.000 km making it the country with the longest coastline in the world (Jabines and Inventor, 2007). The country is characterized by the biggest island (Luzon) in the north, Mindanao in the South and a group of islands (Visayas) in the center. The population size amounts to 108 million people (2014) and is strongly increasing with a growth rate of 1.81% (2014). The share of the urban population accounts for 49% (2011) with an urbanization rate of more than 2% (2010-15). The largest urban agglomerations are the capital Manila and Davao with 11.9 million and 1.6 million inhabitants respectively (2011). The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is the 32th largest of the countries of the world with roughly $270 billion (2013) and a growth rate of 6.8% (2013). The composition of GDP by sector is 11.2% agriculture, 31.6% industry, and 57.2% services (The World Factbook, 2015). Like many regions of the developing world, the differences between the urban and rural areas are large. The capital Manila contributes nearly half of total national economic production (World Bank, 2013b; Yusuf and Francisco 2009) and 97% of the total GDP in the Philippines is controlled by 15% of the population. Due to its location in the tropics, the yearly mean temperature of about 27°C in the Philippines shows only small variability within the year (DENR, 1999). The temporal distribution of rainfall in the Philippines shows a strong seasonality, which is caused mainly by surface winds brought by the monsoons and topographic effects (Chang et al., 2005). The range of annual intensity is between 1000 and 5000 mm (DENR, 1999). Figure 1: Precipitation pattern of the Philippines (source: PAGASA, 2015) Figure 2: Multi-hazard Vulnerability Map of Southeast Asia (Source: Yusuf and Francisco, 2009) 6