Situational Report

April 17, 2019

Since September of 2018, the Philippine Atmospheric Geographical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) has warned on a possible El Niño phenomenon which will be affecting the country. PAGASA’s latest update on March 22 states that the country is experiencing weak to moderate strength El Niño which has varying impacts at present and may become severe continuing into June- August which could extend up to October and weakens but does not disappear up to December of 2019. In January 2019, three provinces in Mindanao has experienced dry conditions or 20-60% less rainfall while four provinces still in Mindanao is experiencing #dry spell and the province of Ilocos Norte is also experiencing #drought. On February of 2019, 34 provinces including the provinces of Abra, Benguet, Kalinga, Apayao and Mountain Province in Cordillera experienced dry conditions. Eleven (11) provinces including the neighbouring provinces of La Union and Ilocos Sur have experienced dry spell and five provinces including Ilocos Norte have experienced drought.

For the past two months, provinces in the Cordillera Region have experienced way below normal rainfall. It was even lower than the El Niño experienced in 2015. For the month of February 2019, zero millimeters or no rainfall was recorded in all the provinces of the Cordillera.

As of March 22, 2019, the Department of Agriculture Regional Operation Center reported an estimate and initial damages worth 1.11 billion mainly from rice, corn, cassava and other high value crops.

Corn having the highest damages worth PhP874.397 million, followed by rice at PhP222.250 million, PhP10.808 million from high value crops and PhP3.766 million worth of cassava.

Recently, the municipality of Paracelis in Mountain Province has declared a state of calamity due to vast effect of El Niño to crops, agricultural products and diseases in animals.

The Province of Apayao has declared the highest loss mainly from corn, rice and high value crops worth PhP528,614,276.05 followed by the province of Ifugao with total damage worth PhP34,922,033.75, Kalinga with PhP236,328,697.40, Abra with PhP2,617,110.00 and Mountain Province with PhP722,575.00. Benguet on the other hand, has not incurred damage on crops.

Aside from agricultural damages, hectares of mountains around the region were burned uncontrollably aggravated by the limited or no rainfall and warm temperature.

In response, the Department of Agriculture has made inventory on water pumps in all provinces and has requested for a cloud seeding to ease and salvage remaining crops.

In Kalinga and Apayao, communities affected are requesting for food and assistance support to livelihood.

Monitoring of the effects of the drought is still on-going in all affected areas.