Sonny Boy, Pablo and Climate Change

While most of us remember tropical storm Pablo through the powerful winds it brought on that fateful Tuesday morning, a brave 15 year-old boy from New Bataan in Compostela Valley remembers it as the phenomenon that wrecked havoc to the place he called home and left thousands killed, missing or homeless.

Sonny Boy Jumaling bravely shared how he survived in the raging torrent of water and mud when Pablo showed its wrath in his town, several kilometers away from the central part of New Bataan. It was about thirty minutes past five in the morning when the ferocious storm hit their town, with winds powerful enough to send roofs off the houses and coconut trees swinging.

And there was a distressing uproar from afar they mistook as a mere sound of wind. But they were wrong. In an instant, a furious surge of mud came down from the hills which prompted them to run. They ran to a much safer ground but time fell short as they were swept by such a powerful force.

Sonny Boy Jumaling let photographer Leo Timogan capture a photo of his face which he also bravely reviewed through Leo's DSLR screen. Sonny Boy is among the 42 wounded victims - and counting - who are housed in Tagum City's Rotary Park gymasium.

And so began Sonny Boy’s daylong ordeal. According to him, the angry floodwater flowing at a velocity of 80 kilometers per hour brought him to places he didn't recognize. What he can recall is that the force of nature at its fiercest. He managed to climb a coconut tree but it also bowed down to Pablo. When it fell down, Sonny Boy hold on to it for a bit but the wounds he sustained from all over his body forced him to let go.

Darkness was about to crack when he was rescued alone in the boundary of New Bataan and Maragusan, way too far from his home and from his loved ones. With fresh wounds all over his body, Sonny Boy was reunited with his 13 year-old brother in the town's gymnasium where thousands of evacuees sought refuge and where hundreds lay dead.

His mother did not make it but thanks to God, his father is alive whom he was reunited with in Tagum City's Rotary Park Gymnasium that was temporarily made a secondary hospital treating wounded victims from the towns of Compostela and New Bataan.

Sonny Boy's story is one of the many stories of survival that emerge during the storm. Personally, his story became the multi-faceted face of the phenomenon that caught us by surprise.

Freedom from typhoons is one of nature's gift to Mindanao. True. But not anymore. Our generation have never seen a single storm batter this part of the country but due to the dramatic change in climate and a warming planet, we all suffer the wrath of Mother Nature.

Quite ironically, when Pablo proved its mettle as the deadliest storm to hit the Philippines this year, environment ministers and envoys from the different parts of the world meet at an international climate conference in Doha, Qatar convened by the United Nations.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon highlighted the "abnormal as the new normal." The danger signs are all around, Ban noted, emphasizing that ice caps are melting, permafrost thawing and sea levels rising. In a report by the Associated Press, the climate meet in Doha seeks to craft a new global climate treaty that would take effect in the year 2020. They are also discussing how to rein in greenhouse gas emissions before then, partly by extending the Kyoto Protocol, a treaty limiting the emissions of most industrialized countries.

The Kyoto Protocol expires as 2012 bids goodbye. In Doha, ministers and envoys are having a hard time deciding whether to extend the treaty to five years while developing countries are pressuring developed countries like the United States and China to show how they intend keeping a promise to raise climate funding for poor countries to $100 billion per year by 2020 -- up from a total of $30 billion in 2010-2012.

But the European Union and the United States have refused to put concrete figures on the table in Doha for new 2013-2020 climate funding. AFP reports that individual country pledges did start to trickle in, but the European bloc said Wednesday that tight finances prevented it taking on binding near-term commitments, while Washington insisted it was already "doing what we agreed to do."

Philippine climate envoy Naderev Sano's emotional appeal to the UN body in Doha reflects the collective voice of the Filipino people who, among many citizens of the world, suffer the wrath of global warming. His very short but very powerful remarks came with tears:

As we sit here in these negotiations, even as we vacillate and procrastinate here, the death toll is rising. There is massive and widespread devastation. Hundreds of thousands of people have been rendered without homes. And the ordeal is far from over, as typhoon Bopha has regained some strength as it approaches another populated area in the western part of the Philippines.

We have never had a typhoon like Bopha, which has wreaked havoc in a part of the country that has never seen a storm like this in half a century. And heartbreaking tragedies like this are not unique to the Philippines, because the whole world, especially developing countries struggling to address poverty and achieve social and human development, confront these same realities. 

I speak on behalf of 100 million Filipinos, a quarter of a million of whom are seeking out a living working here in Qatar. And I am making an urgent appeal, not as a negotiator, not as a leader of my delegation, but as a Filipino. I appeal to the whole world, I appeal to leaders from all over the world, to open our eyes to the stark reality that we face. I appeal to ministers. The outcome of our work is not about what our political masters want. It is about what is demanded of us by 7 billion people. 

 The warming of our planet and the sudden change in climate is ultimately the result of selfish human activities that destroy our environment. If our world leaders fail to agree on a treaty that would help lessen the threat of global warming, then probably more disasters and catastrophes are set to wreck havoc.

While this bickering in Doha continues and as the Kyoto Protocol is on the brink of expiration without single strand of hope that it gets its much-needed extension, we can expect that stories like that of Sonny Boy and the many victims of climate change in the Philippines will continue in the years to come.

Sonny Boy told me he never lost hope in the long course of his daylong ordeal. Each time he bobbed his head out from the muddy water, facing the gloomy sky, he would invoke God's help. 

Like him, we must never lost hope in our battle against global warming. But there's something that we can do. The challenge is succinctly summed up by Mr. Sano as he wrapped up his appeal in Doha:

I appeal to all, please, no more delays, no more excuses. Please, let 2012 be remembered as the year the world found the courage to find the will to take responsibility for the future we want. I ask of all of us here, if not us, then who? If not now, then when? If not here, then where?