Climate change presents new threat to Philippines’ UNESCO rice terraces

Ifugao, Philippines – At first light, the village of Batad begins to stir to life beneath the towering cliffs surrounding its amphitheatre-like rice terraces, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.Apu Penneng, an Ifugao elder who owns one of the village’s largest tracts of ricefields, struts with youthful confidence along a narrow and steep path in this highland community 1,100 metres (3,608ft) above sea level.Dressed in a traditional loincloth, shawl and headgear, he is heading for the Tanig, an elaborate morning ritual before the harvest begins. At a courtyard next to rows of huts, dozens of village women also gather for the Bullogan chi Munbotoh, the procession to the harvest site.Against the glow of the rising sun, the centuries-old terraces finally come in full view as if cascading from the sky. The fields of Tinawon rice grains, moist from the drizzle the night before, glimmer like morsels of gold ready for picking.But the otherwise majestic landscape is punctuated by the sight of collapsed earth and boulders, right in the middle of the terraces.Village elder Apu Penneng, who is regarded as the custodian of his family’s vast rice paddies in Batad, heads to the harvest site during this...