The last Automatic was my take on the rising oceans. It dwells on the anecdote of the sky falling. The Sky is Falling is an absurd belief that disaster is imminent. The term comes from a fable about a chicken who believes the sky is falling when an acorn falls on its head.
To me, however, this is a clear future danger that has proven to be imminent and certain, that is why I deemed it necessary that we must take a hard look into this phenomenon. We must take a long and analytical gaze into Sea Level Rising in the Philippines and plan, do act on mitigation actions.
The Philippine Daily Inquirer Article Urban Poor Struggle to Adapt as Rising Seas Threaten to Remap Metro Manila penned by Jhesse O. Enano disclosed that; The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported in August this year that the average global rate of sea level rise increased from 1.9 millimeters per year between 1971 and 2006 to 3.7mm between 2006 and 2018.
“Human influence was very likely the driver of these increases,” said the report, pointing to greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels among the main culprits.
With climate change-induced sea level rise, seawater is already invading some islands in the Visayas, while seawater intrusion is a looming threat to Metro Manila, home to 13 million people. In the Manila Bay area, the sea is rising by 12.13 mm per year, about four times the global average, according to a study by the Coastal Sea Level Rise Philippines Project (CSLR-Phil), which used tide gauges and satellite measurements.
Even the Department of Foreign Affairs raised this concern last June 14, 2021, on the occasion of the 21st Meeting of the United Nations Open-ended Informal Consultative Process on Oceans and the Law of the Sea. The Oscar M. Lopez Foundation had allotted a whole Scientific Study on the Rising of Seas. The World Bank in the Climate Change Knowledge Portal had warned the Philippines; Rising sea levels create not only stress on the physical coastline, but also on coastal ecosystems. Saltwater intrusions can be contaminating freshwater aquifers, many of which sustain municipal and agricultural water supplies and natural ecosystems. As global temperatures continue to warm, sea levels will keep rising for a long time because there is a substantial lag to reaching an equilibrium. The magnitude of the rise will depend strongly on the rate of future carbon dioxide emissions and future global warming, and the speed might increasingly depend on the rate of glacier and ice sheet melting.
On a personal note, I have seen the dreadful high tide at the Molle Pier here near the Grand Hotel, McDonald’s, and Mercado Publico in Tacloban City. Soon, when we are affected and when water creeps slowly to our homes, our streets, we remember these days when we are warned, reminded that indeed the Seas are rising slowly yet fearfully, it does so, certainly. We must therefore act now
