Climate change is a serious global concern that is considered to be a major threat to agriculture, aquatic and natural resources. Extreme floods and droughts, soil degradation, water shortages, and increased occurrence of destructive pests and diseases as a result of climate change adversely affect agricultural productivity and ecosystem stability, and consequently, food and water security. 

With climate change, agriculture is much more erratic and riskier for farmers and fisherfolk. Thus, farm level decisions cannot anymore be based solely on farmers’ past experiences. Climate change impacts also disrupt ecosystem functions leading to degraded forest health, outbreak of pests, diseases, and invasive alien species, among others. Valuable ecosystem services are also hampered affecting people and communities.

From 2010-2019, annual damages due to natural disasters cost billions of pesos – total value of damage to agriculture and aquatic, infrastructure and communication is PhP 463 billion of which, 63% is agriculture’s loss share. These disasters also cost the country approximately PhP145 billion per year until 2050 (IFPRI, 2016). The Philippines has the greatest disaster risk index globally, ranking 1st out of 193 countries with a WorldRiskIndex of 46.86 (World Risk Report, 2023).

With this, the Philippines is one of the countries that signed the Paris Agreement. The central aim is to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change by keeping a global temperature rise this century well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Given this situation, DOST-PCAARRD’s Climate Change (CC) and Disaster Risk Reduction Management (DRRM) agenda seek to sustain the productivity and competitiveness of the AANR sector amidst the changing climate. Research and Development (R&D) initiatives provide a strong empirical basis for Science and Technology (S&T) interventions which are introduced for reliable farm and ecosystem management decisions. With S&T, farmers, environmental managers and other stakeholders are aimed to be equipped with better decision-making tools and information to increase their resilience to climate change.