Climate Connections: Heat Worries in Cambodia, the Philippines' Plastic Crisis, New Old Food Estates in Indonesia
Our stories below range from the extreme heat in Cambodia (summer's not too far away for Southeast Asia), the latest version of Indonesia’s long-lambasted policy of food estates, and the Philippines’ flows of plastic waste.
All of these have connections to our heated climate. Obvious are the links between the heatwaves that Cambodia frets about, like much of the region, and global warming.
What about Indonesia’s food estate policy? It involves not only degraded environments but the draining of peatlands, which hold twice more carbon than natural forests. Home to over 20% of the world’s peatlands, Indonesia is the biggest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions from degraded peatlands.
And plastic? Plastic is a convenient product, but it is also made from fossil hydrocarbons through a process using carbon-containing materials like natural (now increasingly called ‘fossil gas’) and crude oil.
The plastic waste in the world’s oceans that is emitted from the Philippines (which has more than 7,600 islands - a third of which are inhabited - and many communities by coastlines and bodies of water) accounts for more than a third of plastic litter swishing around in the world’s seas.
Soon after editing the story about the Philippines’ plastic headache, I came across this Straits Times article, which reports that 97% of plastic trash in the city-state’s beaches comes from elsewhere, from ships or brought in by ocean currents. It reminded me of a Filipino speaker who, at an online discussion a few years ago, described seeing plastic packaging of foreign products in the islands in parts of the South China Sea (that the Philippines calls the West Philippine Sea).
The story of the world’s plastic habit feels like one where humans invented a really useful material but ‘forgot’ to think about where all these will, or can, go.
Previously, we touched on the Philippines’ yearend typhoons - and in December, World Weather Attribution confirmed that yes, having six typhoons affecting the country from October to mid-November 2024 was a record for the Pacific basin; yes, this bears the footprints of a warming climate “supercharged” the typhoon season and yes, we are more likely to see more of this clustering in a warming planet.
Did human-induced climate change influence the environmental conditions leading to this high number of storms? From analysis done by scientists from the Philippines, Britain and the Netherlands, WWA says that when it combines data from both climate models and observation (of the December events), it finds that the potential intensity of storms in 2024 “has been made more likely by a factor of about 1.7, due to warming caused primarily by the burning of fossil fuels.”
This means that storm intensity has increased by about 7.2 km/hour and “are projected to increase with further warming”.
Has climate change has increased the odds of at least three major typhoons making landfall in the Philippines in a year (which was what happened at the end of 2024)? This kind of sequencing of storms is now “25% more frequent than it would have been had we not burned fossil fuels”, as data shows such an event is expected once every 15 years in a 1.3C world.
“For six storms to impact the northern Philippines in such a short period is extremely unusual, and it is difficult to study such an event directly because it is so rare,” said the WWA report. “Overall, our results show that conditions conducive to the development of consecutive typhoons in this region have been enhanced by global warming, and the chance of multiple major typhoons making landfall will continue to increase as long as we continue to burn fossil fuels.”
The start of 2025 has come with confirmation that 2024 —
was the hottest the planet has been, ever
is the first year to exceed 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels for the annual global average temperature
saw the amount of planet-warming carbon dioxide reach a record level, with the biggest one-year jump on record, from 2023
Several data visualisations about global heating have been making the rounds, but the updated warming stripes below, created by professor of climate science Ed Hawkins of the University of Reading, says it simply and powerfully.
Before hitting ‘send’ on this newsletter, I saw the news overnight about Donald Trump’s inauguration as US president. He has done what he said at warp speed - pull the US out of the Paris climate agreement (even as the fires in southern California rage).
May you be well in the new year, and as year of the snake makes its way into a topsy-turvy world -
Johanna - founder/editor of the Reporting ASEAN series
1 S IS FOR SUSTAINABILITY
CAMBODIA: It’s Cooler Now, But Locals Worry About the Heatwaves Ahead
BY SAO PHAL NISEIY
The yearend has brought gentler weather, but residents of Cambodia’s capital are already dreading the return of heatwaves when summer comes around in March.
Cambodia’s schools: Shorter days, fans, water from fire trucks – and not too many options
Local fire trucks came to the rescue of Daun Penh Primary School and other schools in the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, during this summer’s heatwave. The water from their hoses put out the ‘fire’ that is the extreme heat.
Indonesia: The New Old Strategy of Food Estates
BY JOAN RUMENGAN
At the core of the Indonesian government’s string of initiatives on food self-sufficiency – a stop to rice imports this year, the use of reserved forests to grow food and an increase in production targets for rice, sugar, salt – is the new but old, and controversial, food estate programme.
It is a policy long documented as a failure, but various governments have come back to it, time and time again.
PHILIPPINES: Reducing Plastic Waste Isn’t In The Bag — Yet
BY MIKAEL ANGELO S FRANCISCO
From the Philippines to the world? A major contributor to plastic litter in the world’s oceans, the country has laid out paths to curbing plastic pollution. But they are littered with poor waste habits, weak implementation of laws and limited options. (January is zero-waste month in the country.)
2 REPORTING CLIMATE
WATCH! Webinar: The Climate in Our Newsrooms
At our November 2024 webinar, we talked about practical ways to make Southeast Asia’s newsrooms climate-informed and the climate story a multi-beat one. It’s not only about reporters, but editors - and a strong push from news managements.
COVERING THE CLIMATE: ‘It’s a question of attitude as much as resources’
BY JOHANNA SON
In this conversation, Reporting ASEAN editor Johanna Son spoke to Mark Hertsgaard of Covering Climate Now on covering “the biggest story of our time”.
“Climate change is not ‘just one more issue,’ like, say, poverty or housing or human rights, as important as they. Rather, climate change is the overarching context within which every other news story will be unfolding for decades to come, and if a given journalist’s coverage doesn’t reflect that fact, you’re not really reflecting reality.”