Residents of Pugad, an island in the Philippines, have to remove water from their homes by hand, sometimes spending hours scooping each day. Their island is flooded about three times a week.
What’s happening?
According to Agence France-Presse, the 2,500 people living on the island face the sinking of their coasts at a rate as high as 4.3 inches per year, a phenomenon known as “land subsidence.” The sinking is attributed to excessive groundwater extraction, combined with accelerating sea level rise.
As described by the World Economic Forum, in places where access to surface water is limited — due to factors such as population growth, drought, extreme heat, and pollution — groundwater is the primary source of freshwater, and “over-pumping of aquifers can cause the ground above to compact and sink.”
As land sinks, rising seas exacerbate the effects, worsening floods and erosion.
Village captain Jaime Gregorio told AFP, “I think it’s already impossible for our lives in the village to go back to normal because of climate change.”
In addition to altering schoolchildren’s schedules to reduce the spread of flood-borne illnesses, adaptation strategies have included raising homes up on stilts.
“I love this island so much. This was where my mom and dad raised me … but sometimes, I think about leaving because of the high tide,” Maria Tamayo, a street food vendor in Pugad, told the news agency.
Why is this concerning?
Ultimately, the effects of sinking lands and rising seas won’t be restricted to the Philippines or even to island and coastal communities.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has estimated that global mean sea level would rise at least 1 foot above 2000 levels by 2100, even if we significantly reduce heat-trapping pollution. Without that reduction in pollution, the rise could exceed 6.5 feet.
Worldwide reliance on dirty energy sources is driving rising global temperatures, as the heat-trapping gases produced by burning them wrap the planet in a thick blanket. This is causing ice sheets to melt, resulting in rising seas. It’s also drying up freshwater supplies and polluting what remains of them.
Eventually, the effects will be felt everywhere, but low- and middle-income countries, small communities, and marginalized populations living on vulnerable coasts and islands like Pugad are experiencing the impacts disproportionately and right now.
Meanwhile, as Elenida Basug of the Philippines’ Department of Environment and Natural Resources told AFP, “We have very little contribution to climate change, but we are very affected by its adverse effects.”
The department has estimated that the area’s sea level rise — already three times faster than the global average — could speed up by almost fourfold.
What’s being done?
Tamayo urged countries that rely on dirty energy sources the most to take responsibility for their impacts on her community.
The Philippines has yet to set a national strategy to combat this growing problem, but a ban on groundwater extraction has been in place in some parts of the country for almost 20 years, according to AFP.
For some, innovations are the keys that could unlock future solutions to resilience. One architect in the Netherlands, for example, envisions that floating buildings will help communities survive. He hopes they will one day become an integral part of major cities.
But residents of practically any city around the world can already help address land subsidence and rising seas. Transitioning to clean energy sources like solar and wind at the household, local, state, and federal levels can make real differences in mitigating the harm caused by the dirty energy sources that are overheating our planet and flooding families’ homes.
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