employed agricultural workers” with their vulnerabilities further increasing following the disaster.<sup>38</sup> In particular, the increased intensity and frequency of natural disasters is expected to reduce the productivity of agriculture and fishing in the Philippines, the main source of livelihoods for the majority of poor Filipinos – including indigenous groups. The annual combined damage to agriculture from typhoons, droughts, and floods reached PhP 12 billion (USD 246 million) in 2011, equivalent to 3 percent of total agricultural production.<sup>39</sup> Taking a specific case, Typhoon Pablo (Bopha) struck the Philippines in December 2012, particularly affecting Eastern Mindinao where agricultural and fishing livelihoods predominate. A GoP study found that agriculture as the primary source of livelihood declined by 23 percent and fishing by 26 percent as a result of the disaster and that nearly 12 percent of respondents were rendered completely jobless as a result of the typhoon.

# **3. The Impacts of Super‐Typhoon Yolanda**

**Typhoon Yolanda struck the Philippines on November 8, 2013.** With wind speeds exceeding 300 km/h, it is considered the most powerful storm to have made landfall in history.<sup>40</sup> Yolanda cut a path directly across the central Philippines, severely affecting areas in the eastern, central, western Visayas, and northern Palawan (see Map 2), precipitating a storm surge of over four meters in Eastern and Western Samar and Leyte that led to massive loss of life and extensive damage to public and private assets (see Table 1 for a detailed breakdown of those affected/damages by region).

_Table 1: Geographic Areas and Total Number of Persons and Families Affected_<sup>_41_</sup>

||Region|||Numb|er affected|||Percent<br>|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|||Provinces|Cities|Municipalities|Barangays|Families|Persons|of Total|
|4‐A|Calabarzon|5|6|33|168|5,935|27,076|‐|
|4‐B|Mimaropa|5|2|62|793|101,006|466,120|4|
|5|Bicol|6|7|92|1,229|150,889|692,020|6|
|6|Western Visayas|6|16|117|3,176|801,660|3,673,721|30|
|7|Central Visayas|4|14|84|2,119|652,055|2,965,990|24|
|8|Eastern Visayas|6|7|137|4,387|850,080|4,271,726|35|
|10|Northern Mindano|4|3|7|26|4,253|19,592|‐|
|11|Southern Mindano|3|1|11|19|1,000|5,000|‐|
|13|Caraga|5|3|44|205|14,799|69,956|1|
||TOTAL|44|59|587|12,122|2,581,677|12,191,201|100|

**Source:** NEDA, _Reconstruction Assistance on Yolanda (RAY)_ , 2013, p. 3

The human and economic costs of the disaster to the Philippines were extremely high.<sup>3</sup> In terms of economic devastation, Yolanda cost the country an estimated P571.2 billion (USD 12.9 billion) in damages,<sup>42</sup> with over a million homes damaged or destroyed. This equated to 0.9 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). Nearly 6,300 people died, 80 percent of them from the country’s second

> 3 _Along with the sheer strength of Typhoon Yolanda, well-documented issues with the communication of early warning information contributed to these devastating human impacts. A GIZ / EU Commission assessment of the early warning efforts for Yolanda found that the warning was received with enough time to enact preparations but that, crucially, information on the storm surge was not clearly communicated. Consequently, many residents (the report estimates as many as 50 percent in some areas) in the affected regions elected to remain in their homes despite receiving the warnings. Specifically, many were warned about the coming “storm surge”, but did not understand the term. GIZ calculated that approximately 94 percent of the casualties in Tacloban, Palo and Tanauan were caused by the storm surge. The study concludes that “serious warnings and more effective evacuations along the coastline could have saved many lives”, highlighting the primary importance of information, and the sufficient understanding of that information and disaster evacuation procedures by the public, in saving lives._

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