This study aims to assess the vulnerability of Mabalacat City’s agriculture sector, particularly crop production to climate change. The specific objectives are to: 1) determine the climate change impact/s that are most relevant to the agriculture sector of Mabalacat City; 2) identify the drivers of vulnerability of the agriculture sector relative to climate change impact/s; 3) identify the agricultural areas most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and the extent of such effects by generating maps based on the climate change vulnerability index; and 4) present planning implications to reduce the vulnerability of Mabalacat City’s agriculture sector to the aforementioned climate change impacts. The study uses three main methodologies for climate change vulnerability assessment, namely: Index Method, Geographic Information Systems, and Stakeholder Involvement.
Typhoons were identified to be the most relevant climate change impact in Mabalacat City. The indicators of the city’s vulnerability to typhoons were therefore gathered, using available data pertaining to the occurrence of Typhoon Santi, which has, by far, the most devastating effects on the agriculture areas of the city. Through the use of GIS, vulnerability maps based on the weighted summations of the indicator values were generated. From these maps, planning implications for Mabalacat City’s agriculture sector were derived.
The vulnerability maps show the areas vulnerable to climate change depending on the identified indicator. The final vulnerability index map indicates that thirteen barangays are classified with high vulnerability and four are classified with very high vulnerability.
A sensitivity analysis was also conducted to check if the vulnerability levels changed when the weight allocations for each vulnerability component were adjusted to extreme conditions.