AFP UK

The findings are 'an urgent wakeup call for decision-makers'.

Across virtually every sector, the greening of the global economy is unfolding far too slowly to stave off climate catastrophe, according to a sobering report Wednesday from a consortium of research organisations.

From power, industry and transport to food production, deforestation and finance, progress across 40 key indicators must accelerate dramatically — in many cases ten-fold or more — to stay in line with the Paris treaty goal of capping global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Earth’s surface has already warmed 1.2C, enough to unleash a deadly and costly crescendo of climate-enhanced storms, floods, droughts and heatwaves.

In at least five areas those trend lines are still moving in the wrong direction entirely, according to the 200-page analysis, which comes 12 days ahead of crunch UN climate talks in Sharm El-Sheik, Egypt. 

These include the share of natural gas in electricity generation, the share of kilometres travelled by passenger cars, and carbon pollution from agriculture.

“We are not winning in any sector,” said Ani Dasgupta, head of the World Resources Institute, one of half-a-dozen climate policy think tanks that contributed to the report.

The findings, he said, are “an urgent wakeup call for decision-makers to commit to real transformation across every aspect of our economy”.

– Clean energy –

Comparing current efforts to those required by 2030 and mid-century to limit warming to 1.5C, researchers quantified the global gap in climate action. 

“The hard truth is that none of the 40 indicators we assessed are on track to achieve their 2030 targets,” said lead author Sophia Boehm, a researcher at Systems Change Lab.

To prevent dangerous overheating, global carbon pollution must decline 40 percent by the end of this decade. By 2050, the world must be carbon neutral, compensating any remaining emissions with CO2 removal.   

Most worrying, the authors said in a briefing, are shortfalls in the power sector and the lack of progress in halting deforestation. 

The phase-out of coal used to generate electricity without filtering CO2 emissions must happen six times faster, equivalent to retiring nearly 1,000 coal-fired power plants annually over the next seven years, they found.

The power sector is the biggest source of global CO2 emissions, and coal — accounting for nearly 40 percent of electricity worldwide — is by far the most carbon intensive of fossil fuels. 

“If our solution to many things is electrification, then we need to make sure that electricity is clean and free of fossil fuels,” said co-author Louise Jeffery, an analyst at New Climate Institute.    

Huge increases in solar and wind power have not been enough to keep up with expanding demand for energy.

– ‘Irreversible’ forest loss –

Progress on deforestation must accelerate two- to three-fold to keep the 1.5C goal within striking distance, according to the report.

“The loss of primary forest is irreversible, both in terms of carbon storage and as a haven for biodiversity,” said co-author Kelly Levin, chief of science, data and systems change at the Bezos Earth Fund.

“If meeting the 1.5C target is challenging now, it is completely impossible when you chip away at our carbon sinks,” she added, referring to the role of forests and soil in absorbing some 30 percent of humanity’s carbon pollution.  

Other key findings from the report on the pace of change needed this decade:

– Public transport systems such as metros, light-rail and public bus networks must expand six times faster;

– The amount of carbon emitted in cement production must decline 10 times faster;

– Per-capital meat consumption — still on the increase — must drop, and the shift to sustainable diets must happen five times faster.

The report also looked at climate finance.

“Governments and private institutions are failing to deliver on the Paris Agreement’s goals of aligning financial flows with the 1.5C limit,” said Claire Fyson, an analyst at Climate Analytics.

The analysis showed that global climate finance — sure to be a key sticking point at UN talks in Egypt — must grow more than 10 times faster than recent trends, from $640 billion in 2022 to $5.2 in 2030.

At the same time, governments are still pouring money into fossil fuels, spending nearly $700 billion of public financing on coal, oil and gas in 2020.

Major economies nearly doubled the amount they spend on fossil fuel production and consumption subsidies between 2020 and 2021. 

In the past year alone the world has been battered by increasingly intense heatwaves and crop-withering droughts

International climate pledges remain far off track to limit temperature rises to 1.5 degrees Celsius, according to a UN report released Wednesday, less than two weeks ahead of high-stakes negotiations to tackle global warming.

The combined climate pledges of more than 190 nations that signed up to the 2015 Paris climate deal put Earth on track to warm around 2.5C compared to pre-industrial levels by the century’s end, the UN said. 

With the planet already battered by climate-enhanced heatwaves, storms and floods after just 1.2C of warming, experts say the world is still failing to act with sufficient urgency to curb greenhouse gas emissions.     

“We are still nowhere near the scale and pace of emission reductions required to put us on track toward a 1.5 degrees Celsius world,” said Simon Stiell, Executive Secretary of UN Climate Change. 

“To keep this goal alive, national governments need to strengthen their climate action plans now and implement them in the next eight years.”

The UN’s climate experts have said emissions — compared to 2010 levels — need to fall 45 percent by 2030 in order to meet the Paris deal’s more ambitious goal.

In this latest report, the UN said that current commitments from governments around the world will in fact increase emissions by 10.6 percent by 2030.

When nations met in Glasgow last year for a previous round of climate negotiations, they agreed to speed up their climate pledges to cut carbon pollution and increase financial flows to vulnerable developing nations. 

– ‘Disappointing’ –

But only 24 countries, of 193, had updated their plans at the time of the report, which Stiell said was “disappointing”.    

“Government decisions and actions must reflect the level of urgency, the gravity of the threats we are facing, and the shortness of the time we have remaining to avoid the devastating consequences of runaway climate change,” he said.

He called on governments to revisit and strengthen their carbon cutting plans in line with the Paris temperature goals before the UN climate meeting, which will be held from November 6 to 18 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.

Nations are meeting in the shadow of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and cascading global crises of hunger, energy prices and living costs, exacerbated by extreme weather.  

Scientists have warned that any rise above 1.5C risks the collapse of ecosystems and the triggering of irreversible shifts in the climate system.

In the last year alone, the world has seen unprecedented floods, crop-withering heatwaves and wildfires across four continents.

With the impacts slamming hardest into countries least responsible for fossil fuel emissions, calls have grown louder for richer polluters to pay “loss and damage” to vulnerable nations.

In a landmark report this year on climate impacts and vulnerabilities, the UN’s 195-nation Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned that time had nearly run out to ensure a “liveable future” for all. 

That report was signed off by the same governments that will return to negotiations in Egypt. 

In the past year alone the world has been battered by increasingly intense heatwaves and crop-withering droughts

International climate pledges remain far off track to limit temperature rises to 1.5 degrees Celsius, according to a UN report released Wednesday, less than two weeks ahead of high-stakes negotiations to tackle global warming.

The combined climate pledges of more than 190 nations that signed up to the 2015 Paris climate deal put Earth on track to warm around 2.5C (36 degrees Fahrenheit) compared to pre-industrial levels by the century’s end, the UN said. 

With the planet already battered by climate-enhanced heatwaves, storms and floods after just 1.2C of warming, experts say the world is still failing to act with sufficient urgency to curb greenhouse gas emissions.     

“We are still nowhere near the scale and pace of emission reductions required to put us on track toward a 1.5 degrees Celsius world,” said Simon Stiell, Executive Secretary of UN Climate Change. 

“To keep this goal alive, national governments need to strengthen their climate action plans now and implement them in the next eight years.”

The UN’s climate experts have said emissions — compared to 2010 levels — need to fall 45 percent by 2030 in order to meet the Paris deal’s more ambitious goal.

In this latest report, the UN said that current commitments from governments around the world will in fact increase emissions by 10.6 percent by 2030.

When nations met in Glasgow last year for a previous round of climate negotiations, they agreed to speed up their climate pledges to cut carbon pollution and increase financial flows to vulnerable developing nations. 

– ‘Disappointing’ –

But only 24 countries, of 193, had updated their plans at the time of the report, which Stiell said was “disappointing”.    

“Government decisions and actions must reflect the level of urgency, the gravity of the threats we are facing, and the shortness of the time we have remaining to avoid the devastating consequences of runaway climate change,” he said.

He called on governments to revisit and strengthen their carbon cutting plans in line with the Paris temperature goals before the UN climate meeting, which will be held from November 6 to 18 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.

Nations are meeting in the shadow of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and cascading global crises of hunger, energy prices and living costs, exacerbated by extreme weather.  

Scientists have warned that any rise above 1.5C risks the collapse of ecosystems and the triggering of irreversible shifts in the climate system.

In the last year alone, the world has seen unprecedented floods, crop-withering heatwaves and wildfires across four continents.

With the impacts slamming hardest into countries least responsible for fossil fuel emissions, calls have grown louder for richer polluters to pay “loss and damage” to vulnerable nations.

In a landmark report this year on climate impacts and vulnerabilities, the UN’s 195-nation Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned that time had nearly run out to ensure a “liveable future” for all. 

That report was signed off by the same governments that will return to negotiations in Egypt. 

Patients were evacuated from a hospital in Batac city after the quake struck

Residents were too afraid to return to their homes as aftershocks rocked a blacked-out northern Philippines Wednesday, hours after a strong earthquake injured at least 26 people and damaged schools, churches and other buildings.

The 6.4-magnitude quake struck the mountain town of Dolores in Abra province late Tuesday, cutting power to most of the region. Numerous aftershocks rattled Abra through the night and into Wednesday morning, authorities said.

Rescuers pulled out 10 residents from damaged buildings in Ilocos Norte, where 15 people sustained injuries, authorities said.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr ordered a school holiday as authorities assessed damaged buildings and said electricity was being restored.

A building housing a gallery of photos of the presidency of his father, Ferdinand Marcos Sr, in their home city of Batac was among those damaged.

“People are asking for tents, and the reason why is they are afraid of going back to their houses because of the aftershocks, which could collapse their houses with the foundations weakened,” Marcos Jr told reporters.

Several patients spent most of the night outside two government hospitals in Ilocos Norte after ceilings collapsed on several rooms in one and damaged equipment, officials said.

All patients and staff were safe but the outpatient department of one of the two facilities was closed while the building was being inspected.

Rescuer Ron Sequerra said his family had been woken by strong shaking near the epicentre in Abra.

“We hid under a table and my family only went out of the house after the shaking stopped,” Sequerra told AFP by telephone.

At least 11 people were hurt and 58 classrooms were damaged in Abra, many of them in worst-hit town of Lagayan, provincial disaster officer Arnel Valdez said.

– Churches damaged –

Workers cleared a Batac road that had been blocked by tumbling boulders, while a number of old churches in Abra and Ilocos Norte also sustained damage, the civil defence office said.

The Lagayan mayor’s office in Abra was closed after it sustained cracks and broken windows, as was a newly built high school already damaged by a strong quake earlier this year.

“We had a room in there with old laptops that toppled like dominoes. The walls and the posts were destroyed. It’s no longer safe to use,” Esterio Apolinar, principal of Lagayan’s Pulot National High School, told AFP.

The spire of an old church in the nearby town of La Paz crumbled, scattering blocks of brick on the courtyard, its parish priest Christian Edward Padua told AFP.

Parish priest Jose Vernon Ilano said a life-size statue of Jesus Christ lay face-down on the floor with its severed right arm nearby at his damaged Catholic church in the Ilocos Norte town of Sarrat.

Ilocos Norte governor Matthew Manotoc, the president’s nephew, told government workers to take the day off while authorities inspected buildings.

All the region’s airports were temporarily closed as runways and other facilities were checked for damage, the civil aviation office said in a statement.

A 7.0-magnitude quake in mountainous Abra in July triggered landslides and ground fissures, killing 11 people and injuring several hundred.

Quakes are a daily occurrence in the Philippines, which sits along the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, an arc of intense seismic and volcanic activity that stretches from Japan through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific basin.

Patients were evacuated from a hospital in Batac city after the quake struck

Residents were too afraid to return to their homes as aftershocks rocked a blacked-out northern Philippines Wednesday, hours after a strong earthquake injured at least six people and damaged schools, churches and other buildings.

The 6.4-magnitude quake struck the mountain town of Dolores in Abra province late Tuesday, cutting power to most of the region. Numerous aftershocks rattled Abra through the night and into Wednesday morning, authorities said.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr ordered a school holiday as authorities assessed damaged buildings and said electricity was being restored.

A building housing a gallery of photos of the presidency of his father, Ferdinand Marcos Sr, in their home city of Batac was among those damaged.

“People are asking for tents, and the reason why is they are afraid of going back to their houses because of the aftershocks, which could collapse their houses with the foundations weakened,” Marcos Jr told reporters.

Several patients spent most of the night outside a government hospital in the city after ceilings collapsed on several rooms and damaged equipment, a hospital staff member said.

All patients and staff were safe but the hospital’s outpatient department was closed while the building was being inspected.

Rescuer Ron Sequerra said his family had been woken by strong shaking near the epicentre in Abra.

“We hid under a table and my family only went out of the house after the shaking stopped,” Sequerra told AFP by telephone. He said six people were injured in Lagayan town.

Workers cleared a Batac road that had been blocked by tumbling boulders, while a number of old churches in Abra and Ilocos Norte also sustained damage, the civil defence office said.

The Lagayan mayor’s office in Abra was closed after it sustained cracks and broken windows, as was a newly built high school already damaged by a strong quake earlier this year.

“We had a room in there with old laptops that toppled like dominoes. The walls and the posts were destroyed. It’s no longer safe to use,” Esterio Apolinar, principal of Lagayan’s Pulot National High School, told AFP.

The education department also released photos of upended desks and chairs and books scattered on the floor at other Lagayan schools.

The spire of an old church in the nearby town of La Paz crumbled, scattering blocks of brick on the courtyard, its parish priest Christian Edward Padua told AFP.

Ilocos Norte governor Matthew Manotoc, the president’s nephew, told government workers to take the day off while authorities inspected buildings.

Flights were cancelled when the airport in the provincial capital, Laoag City, shut its runway for two days to check for damage, flag-carrier Philippine Airlines said.

A 7.0-magnitude quake in mountainous Abra in July triggered landslides and ground fissures, killing 11 people and injuring several hundred.

Quakes are a daily occurrence in the Philippines, which sits along the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, an arc of intense seismic and volcanic activity that stretches from Japan through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific basin.

Cyclone Sitrang left a trail of devastation in Bangladesh's densely populated, low-lying coastal region

Bangladesh rescue workers found the bodies of four missing crew of a dredger boat, taking the death toll from Cyclone Sitrang to 28 as millions remained without power, officials said Wednesday.

Cyclones — the equivalent of hurricanes in the Atlantic or typhoons in the Pacific — are a regular menace in the region but scientists say climate change is likely making them more intense and frequent.

Cyclone Sitrang made landfall in southern Bangladesh on Monday but authorities managed to get about a million people to safety before the monster storm hit.

With winds of 80 kilometres (55 miles) per hour, it still left a trail of devastation in the country’s densely populated, low-lying coastal region, which is home to tens of millions of people.

The government said nearly 10,000 tin-roofed homes were either “destroyed or damaged” and crops on large swathes of farmland were wrecked at a time of record-high food inflation.

Fire department divers found the bodies of four crew of a dredger boat that sank during the storm in the Bay of Bengal.

“We found one body on Tuesday night and three more this morning. Four crew are still missing,” Abdullah Pasha from the fire department told AFP.

Nearly five million people were still without power on Wednesday, Rural Electrification Board official Debashish Chakrabarty told AFP. 

Nearly a million people who were evacuated from low-lying regions have now returned to their homes.

Trees were uprooted as far away as the capital Dhaka, hundreds of kilometres from the storm’s centre.

Heavy rains lashed much of the country, flooding cities such as Dhaka, Khulna and Barisal — which took on 324 millimetres (13 inches) of rainfall on Monday.

About 33,000 Rohingya refugees from Myanmar, controversially relocated from the mainland to a storm-prone island, were ordered to stay indoors but there were no reports of casualties or damage, officials said.

In recent years, better forecasting and more effective evacuation planning have dramatically reduced the death toll from such storms.

The worst recorded, in 1970, killed hundreds of thousands of people.

Patients were evacuated from a hospital in Batac city after the quake struck

Aftershocks rocked the northern Philippines early Wednesday, hours after a strong earthquake injured at least six people and caused substantial damage to a hospital and several old churches, authorities said.

The 6.4-magnitude quake struck the mountain town of Dolores in Abra province late Tuesday, followed by numerous aftershocks over the rest of the night, the state seismology office said.

“We hid under a table and my family only went out of the house after the shaking stopped,” Abra rescuer Ron Sequerra told AFP by telephone, adding his family had been woken by strong ground shaking.

Six people were injured in the Abra town of Lagayan, Sequerra added. 

The Lagayan mayor’s office and a high school building were sealed off after they sustained cracks and broken glass windows, according to pictures posted on the town’s official Facebook page.

In the city of Batac in the neighbouring province of Ilocos Norte, several patients spent most of the night outside a government hospital after the ceiling collapsed on several rooms and damaged equipment, hospital staff said.

Boulders rolling down a hillside temporarily blocked a road linking Batac to the nearby town of Banna, but rescue officials said the landslide had since been cleared.

A number of old churches in Abra and Ilocos Norte also sustained damage, the civil defence office said.

Ilocos Norte governor Matthew Manotoc declared a school holiday and government workers were told not to report for work as the authorities inspected the integrity of buildings.

In July, a 7.0-magnitude quake also in mountainous Abra province triggered landslides and ground fissures, killing 11 people and injuring several hundred others, according to the official count.

Quakes are a daily occurrence in the Philippines, which sits along the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, an arc of intense seismic as well as volcanic activity that stretches from Japan through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific basin.

330 major firms want measures to force businesses destroying the natural world

Businesses must be compelled to reveal their impact on nature, more than 300 firms said in an open letter to world leaders published on Wednesday ahead of crunch United Nations negotiations to halt catastrophic biodiversity loss.  

Consumer goods group Unilever, furniture maker IKEA and India’s Tata Steel were among a slew of high profile corporations calling for stricter measures to impel firms to act, amid growing alarm over the devastation being wrought upon the natural world. 

“We need governments globally to transform the rules of the economic game and require business to act now,” the Business for Nature coalition said.

It said its open letter had been signed by some 330 companies with combined revenues of more than $1.5 trillion. 

International efforts to protect the world’s natural life support systems — including air, food and water — are set to conclude in Canada in December. Negotiators are hammering out a global framework to “live in harmony with nature” by 2050, with key benchmarks in 2030.

While businesses are beginning to report on their carbon emissions and climate impacts — albeit with some facing accusations of “greenwashing” — few firms give details on biodiversity.

The businesses that signed on to the statement said they wanted clarity from policymakers. 

“This statement shows the extensive support from major businesses for an ambitious global deal for nature, with clear goals to drive collective business and finance action,” said Andre Hoffmann, the vice-chairman of Roche Holdings.  

“The political certainty will accelerate the necessary changes to our business models. We stand ready to do everything in our power to shift to a society where nature, people and business thrive.”

In March, a report by central banks found that financial institutions and businesses were underestimating the risks of biodiversity loss and destroying the natural assets they depend on.

The new statement calls on heads of state to sign up to a target of mandatory requirements for large firms to assess and disclose their impacts and dependency on biodiversity by the end of this decade. 

The task “won’t be easy but it must happen” the firms said, urging measures to ensure that the UN targets aim to both reduce negative impacts and encourage positive ones.  

“The current rate of global economic activity is more than the planet can cope with,” said Steve Waygood, the chief responsible investment officer at Aviva Investors, which also signed the Business for Nature statement.  

“If nature was a current account, then we would be heavily overdrawn. This is bad for the environment and bad for long term growth.”

Many hope the UN deal, when finalised, will be as ambitious in its goals to protect life on Earth as the Paris Agreement was for climate change — even if the United States is not a party to UN efforts to conserve nature.  

One landmark proposal on the table is the protection of 30 percent of wild land and oceans by 2030. 

Another key focus of negotiations are harmful subsidies for things like fossil fuels, agriculture and fishing that can result in environmental destruction and encourage unsustainable levels of production and consumption.  

These amount to as much as $1.8 trillion every year, or two percent of global gross domestic product, Business for Nature has estimated. 

The world failed to meet almost all of a previous set of targets on nature in the decade to 2020.

This handout satellite image from NASA/JPL-Caltech shows a methane plume at least three miles (4.8 kilometers) long coming from a major landfill south of Tehran, Iran

NASA scientists, using a tool designed to study how dust affects climate, have identified more than 50 spots around the world emitting major levels of methane, a development that could help combat the potent greenhouse gas.

“Reining in methane emissions is key to limiting global warming,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a press release on Tuesday.

“This exciting new development will not only help researchers better pinpoint where methane leaks are coming from, but also provide insight on how they can be addressed — quickly.”

NASA said its Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation (EMIT) is designed to foster understanding of the effects of airborne dust on climate.

But EMIT, which was installed on the International Space Station in July and can focus on areas as small as a soccer field, has also shown the ability to detect the presence of methane.

NASA said more than 50 “super-emitters” of methane gas in Central Asia, the Middle East, and the southwestern United States have been identified so far. Most of them are connected to the fossil-fuel, waste or agriculture sectors.

Kate Calvin, NASA’s chief scientist and senior climate advisor, said EMIT’s “additional methane-detecting capability offers a remarkable opportunity to measure and monitor greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change.”

– ‘Exceeds our expectations’ –

Methane is responsible for roughly 30 percent of the global rise in temperatures to date. 

While far less abundant in the atmosphere than CO2, it is about 28 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas on a century-long timescale. Over a 20-year time frame, it is 80 times more potent.

Methane lingers in the atmosphere for only a decade, compared to hundreds or thousands of years for CO2. 

This means a sharp reduction in emissions could shave several tenths of a degree Celsius off of projected global warming by mid-century, helping keep alive the Paris Agreement goal of capping Earth’s average temperature increase to 1.5C, according to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).

“EMIT will potentially find hundreds of super-emitters – some of them previously spotted through air-, space-, or ground-based measurement, and others that were unknown,” NASA said.

Andrew Thorpe, a research technologist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory leading the EMIT methane effort, said some of the methane plumes detected by EMIT are among the largest ever seen.

“What we’ve found in a just a short time already exceeds our expectations,” Thorpe said.

NASA said a methane plume about two miles (3.3 kilometers) long was detected southeast of Carlsbad, New Mexico, in the Permian Basin, one of the largest oilfields in the world.

It said 12 plumes from oil and gas infrastructure were identified in Turkmenistan, east of the Caspian Sea port city of Hazar.

A methane plume at least three miles (4.8 kilometers) long was detected south of Tehran from a major waste-processing complex, NASA said.

Map locating the epicentre of a magnitude 6.4 earthquake recorded in the northern Philippines on October 25, 11 km east of the city of Dolores

A 6.4-magnitude earthquake rocked the northern Philippines late Tuesday, the US Geological Service said, sending panicked residents out into the streets and causing substantial damage to a hospital.

The quake, caused by a movement of the earth’s crust, struck around 10:59 pm (1459 GMT) near the upland town of Dolores.

Staff said they evacuated patients from the 200-bed Mariano Marcos Memorial Hospital in Batac city, about 60 kilometres (37 miles) north of the epicentre, which sustained some of the worst known damage thus far.

Photos of collapsed ceilings in some of the hospital rooms, as well as dozens of patients sat on chairs on the driveway outside were posted on the local fire service’s official Facebook page.

“The authorities made us leave the building while they checked the building integrity…. We are currently conducting an assessment of the damage,” hospital worker Tom Tabije told AFP by phone.

In Laoag city, near Batac, call centre worker Joffrey Lavarias, 24, filmed screaming co-workers ducking beneath tables inside a high-rise office building as computer monitors on top of the furniture rocked. The lights went out seconds later.

“I thought the earthquake wasn’t strong, that’s why I decided to film it. After 30 seconds, the shaking suddenly became very strong,” he told AFP.

“That’s when we hid under our tables,” he said, adding they safely evacuated the building shortly after the shaking stopped.

Their employer later sent them home.

The civil defence office in Abra province, where Dolores is located, told AFP there were no immediate reports of casualties, but the extent of the damage would not be known until morning.

The quake, which occurred at a relatively shallow depth of 15.2 kilometres, was felt as far away as the capital Manila, more than 330 kilometres to the south.

Reached by phone, Dolores police patrolman Jeffrey Blanes told AFP that “buildings were shaking so people ran outside.”

“We are unable to make a thorough assessment of the impact now because it is nighttime and we are also thinking about our people’s safety,” Abra rescuer Joel de Leon told AFP by phone.

– ‘Ring of fire’ –

In July, a 7.0-magnitude quake also in the mountainous Abra province triggered landslides and ground fissures, killing 11 people and injuring several hundred others, according to the official count.

Quakes are a daily occurrence in the Philippines, which sits along the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, an arc of intense seismic as well as volcanic activity that stretches from Japan through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific basin.

The nation’s civil defence office regularly holds drills simulating earthquake scenarios along active fault lines.

In October 2013, a 7.1-magnitude earthquake struck the central island of Bohol, killing more than 200 people.

That powerful quake altered the island’s landscape and a “ground rupture” pushed up a stretch of earth by up to three metres, creating a wall of rock above the epicentre.