Mariejo Ramos

Record heat in the Philippines this month has forced schools to send children home for online classes, reviving memories of COVID lockdowns and raising fears that more extreme weather in the years to come could deepen educational inequalities.

Pupils at 7,000 public schools in the Southeast Asian country were sent home last week due to unusually hot weather in many areas that forecasters have linked to the effects of the El Niño weather phenomenon.

Along the flood-prone coasts of the Philippines, one of the defining dilemmas of the climate crisis - how to balance environmental needs with economic development - is dominating a debate around the restoration of mangrove forests.

Conservationists want the government to ensure disused aquaculture ponds - used to farm fish and shellfish - revert to their natural state as mangrove forests, allowing them to form a natural barrier against erosion, floods and storm surges.

As the Philippines works to ramp up mining to meet global demand for metals crucial to the green energy transition, environmental groups are demanding strict limits to protect nature and Indigenous lands.

The Philippines has the world's fourth-largest copper reserves, fifth-biggest nickel deposits and is also rich in cobalt - all of which have important uses in clean energy technologies, from lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles (EVs) to solar panels.

Saddled with high cancer rates and late diagnoses, the Philippines is trying a whole new tack: asking business to step into state shoes and screen millions of workers for early signs of the disease.

Be it cervical, breast or colon cancer, the Southeast Asian nation wants to lower its cancer deaths by increasing screening.

Medics say early detection is key to improving survival rates, so last year the government changed course and opted to partner with the private sector to boost testing levels. 

Lucy Ortega thought her nightmare as an enslaved domestic worker in Syria was finally over when she boarded a government repatriation flight back to the Philippines four years ago. Instead, she faced a new set of problems.

Ortega was trafficked into servitude for eight years in Syria, then stranded for two years with other maids in a shelter in the Philippine Embassy when she sought help - an episode that caused outrage in the Philippines and made global headlines.

With Christmas fast approaching, Mindalyn Villanueva is counting the days until she can buy essentials with food stamps she receives as part of a new programme to help some of the Philippines' poorest families.

"I can buy rice, noodles and bread. At least for a few days, we don't have to worry about food," said the 43-year-old mother-of-three who lives in Tondo, one of the poorest areas of the capital, Manila.

Ever since he was a teenager, Filipino fisherman Rony Drio has been sailing into the heart of the South China Sea to fish at the Scarborough Shoal, a large atoll rich in fish stocks that has become one of Asia's most contested maritime features.

But now, 56-year-old Drio said, it has become increasingly difficult and dangerous to fish at the atoll - some 200 km (124 miles) off the Filipino coast - because of aggressive action by China, which claims the disputed shoal.

Thousands of hospitals worldwide are "at high risk of total or partial shutdown from extreme weather events" if fossil fuels are not phased out by the end of the century, a report by XDI, a climate-risk data analysis company said on Saturday.

The report comes as world leaders meet to discuss the impact of climate change on health at the COP28 U.N. climate summit in Dubai and the benefit to health of reducing emissions.

Joanna Sustento lost her home and most of her family when Typhoon Haiyan smashed into the Filipino city of Tacloban on Nov. 8, 2013, an experience that drove her to join the fight to make fossil fuel firms pay up for worsening climate disasters.

One of the most destructive storms in modern history, Haiyan killed more than 6,000 people and displaced millions, with the total bill for losses and damage estimated at 571 billion pesos ($10.18 billion) by the Philippine government.

Social worker Carmela Bastes had dedicated years of her career to helping catch sex traffickers and supporting their victims in the Filipino city of Tacloban. Then, a decade ago, Typhoon Haiyan struck.

Haiyan, which killed more than 6,000 people and displaced millions in the Philippines, triggered a humanitarian crisis that provided fertile ground for traffickers in the hard-hit Eastern Visayas region.