involvement in HADR and DSCA. Measures will also likely be required to
protect military installations, both in the United States and abroad, and to
work with partner nations that support DoD operations and activities. Sea
level rise, increased ocean acidification, and increased ocean warming pose
threats to fish stocks, coral, mangroves, recreation and tourism, and the
control of disease affecting the economies, and ultimately stability, of
DoD’s partner nations. Some Pacific island nations face the risk of being
entirely submerged by rising seas, and most island nations’ freshwater
supplies will be threatened by saltwater intrusion well before then. Loss of
land, especially highly populated and agriculturally rich coastal land, also
poses second- order effects on human displacement and economic and
food stability, and may further exacerbate challenges associated with
disease vectors.
2. Sir David King’s 2015 Report, prepared in conjunctions with experts from China,
India and the USA, ‘Climate Change: A Risk Assessment’12, which concludes:
[W]e have a battle on our hands: a battle to preserve a safe climate for the
future. Powerful forces are engaged in this battle, whether we notice them
or not. The power of vested interests to resist change, the inertia of
infrastructure systems, and the unyielding laws of thermodynamics all
seem to be arrayed against us.
To win this battle, we must deploy equally powerful forces in favour of
change ... We must match the laws of physics with a will and a
determination that is equally unyielding.
3. Explaining Ocean Warming: Causes, scale, effects and consequences Edited by D.
Laffoley and J. M. Baxter, September 201613.
The above are just a selection of recent technical assessments. There are, of course,
many others.
5.2 Assessments specific to The Philippines
In addition to the generic assessments referred to above, the Honourable
Commission is respectfully referred to the following assessments, which consider
more specifically the vulnerability of The Philippines.
The Climate Reality Project as an NGO founded by former US Vice President Al Gore.
It reports on the situation in The Philippines as follows14:
12
http://www.csap.cam.ac.uk/media/uploads/files/1/climate-change--a-risk-assessmentv11.pdf
13
https://portals.iucn.org/library/sites/library/files/documents/2016-046_0.pdf
14 https://www.climaterealityproject.org/blog/how-climate-change-affecting-philippines
16