greenhouse gas emissions, which is only possible to meet with stringent climate policies to limit actual emissions. In contradiction, RCP8.5 represents a future with very high GHG emissions as a result of a non-climate policy scenario (Vuuren, 2011). RCP6.0 and RCP4.5 are so-called stabilization scenarios and are situated between the two extreme scenarios, in terms of their radiative forcing but also mean global surface temperature change until the end of the century. The mentioned SRES scenarios can be related to the new RCPs in a way that A2 corresponds to RCP8.5, A1B lies in between RCP8.5 and RCP6.0 and B1 is related to RCP4.5. The optimistic RCP2.6 scenario has no comparable SRES scenario. We will further refer to the different pathways by using the abbreviation, e.g. RCP8.5. In some literature, these RCP8.5 projections are also called the 4°C world, as the global mean temperature increase until 2100 will roughly be 4°C (e.g. World Bank, 2013a). This report is a literature review for climate change impacts in the Philippines. As described in the next chapters, the Philippines is one of the most threatened regions in terms of natural (in particular weather related) disasters. Climate change and the challenges of socio-economic development are making the situation even worse. All in all, the scientific field of climate impacts in the region is a strongly growing one. There are many research groups worldwide contributing to an increasing understanding of the interrelations between global changing climate: its local characteristics and the resulting environmental and socio-economic consequences. Of great importance as a source of knowledge are the reports of the IPCC – the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – which was established in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP). Its reports support the prevention of anthropogenic climate change and compile the work of thousands of scientists in related fields worldwide. We refer here a lot to that work as it is internationally accepted as an authority on climate change. In 2007, the organization was awarded with the Nobel Peace Prize. At the end of each chapter, we will specify the publications that we believe are the most important. This was assessed by the scientific interrelation, i.e. citation in the IPCC reports and/ or general frequency of citations. Study limitations Given the time limitation and the sheer amount of scientific papers that have been published relating to this topic, this study only considered the most recent scientific publications. However, this study tried to fill the vulnerability-matrix (and the reference list) with the relevant publications. We mostly rejected older literature, as we believed the scientific insights are, if relevant, entailed in more recent publications. In the field of climate science, the Reports of the IPCC are of great importance as they entail the combined, reviewed and most recent knowledge of the worldwide scientific community. We use the reports not only as a source of information, but also to gain an insight into the reliability of a publication within a short time. Many publications encompassed in the literature review are cited in the IPCC reports, which require a certain reflection in the scientific community. Further, we added the frequency of citations to the overview-matrix. But it is very crucial to state at this point – not being cited in the IPCC or having low frequency of citations, does NOT mean the publication is invalid for insights of climate change impacts in the Philippines. 5