Exploring climate buffer infrastructures in Tacloban
As the impacts of climate change multiply, climate buffer infrastructures have been promoted as viable climate adaptation strategy, especially in coastal communities. These pertain to either hard engineering structures (e.g. seawalls) or ecosystem-based solutions (e.g. mangroves) that slow down incoming wind and waves.
This is nowhere more relevant than in the Philippines, a country comprised of more than 7,000 islands. The archipelago has around 36,000 kilometres of coastline, and more than 70% of its population live within 50 kilometres of the coast. Consequently, the country is replete with protective infrastructures – both ‘hard’ and ecosystem-based – meant to reduce flooding.
Amidst this proliferation of defence structures, little research has been conducted to examine the social, economic, and ecological outcomes and implications of the construction of such buffer infrastructures. A team from the Sydney Environment Institute (SEI), a world leader on environmental justice research, conducted fieldwork in the coastal city of Tacloban to attempt to address these research gaps.
The multi-disciplinary team was led by Dr Justin See, a postdoctoral research fellow in Climate Change Adaptation at the SEI. He was accompanied by Dr Ginbert Cuaton from the Department of Sociology and Social Policy of Lingnan University and Dr Sandra Seno-Alday from the University of Sydney Business School.
The fieldwork also provided an opportunity to mentor and train some of the University of Sydney’s undergraduate students. Dr Aaron Opdyke’s three civil engineering students – Molly Tuit, Bella Lynn, and Lauren Hocking – obtained first-hand experience in data collection and analysis through DFAT’s New Colombo Mobility Grant.
The research team was warmly welcomed by its local collaborating partner, Eastern Visayas State University (EVSU), through its University President Dr. Dennis De Paz. EVSU and the research team engaged in a co-design of the research process, to ensure that diverse perspectives are heard and that research outputs would be relevant to the different stakeholders in Tacloban.
The project explored two different types of climate buffer infrastructures in Tacloban:
- The national government’s 32-kilometre-long Leyte Tide Embankment Project also known as the “Great Wall of Leyte”
- The Paraiso Mangrove Eco-Park
The team utilised mixed methods, employing household surveys, key informant interviews, and participatory workshops with different stakeholders, including government officials, NGO staff, and local residents to explore diverse perspectives on the climate buffer infrastructures.
While the fieldwork has already concluded, the team has its work cut out for them. Aside from academic journals, the team intends to produce policy briefs that will be useful for practitioners and government officials in planning adaptation projects now and into the future. Dr See will also return to Tacloban in January 2025 to organise a follow-on brainstorming workshop to identify different adaptation pathways beyond hard infrastructures.
With the known limits of traditional hard infrastructures, many scholars have been calling for alternative ways of protecting communities from climatic impacts. This SEI Collaborative Project heeds this call as it attempts to re-imagine different ways of adapting beyond the usual suspects of seawalls and other hard infrastructures.