The Philippines: Understanding the Economic and Ecological Crisis

The Philippines experiences frequent earthquakes and typhoons, due to its location on the western rim of the Pacific Ring of Fire, a U-shaped series of more than 450 volcanoes in the Pacific Ocean that trace an arc along the coasts of South America, North America, Asia, and Australia. Just off the coast of Vietnam and China, south of Taiwan, and north of Borneo and Indonesia, in the South China Sea, it consists of, approximately, 7100 islands. The Philippines has a total landmass of 115,124 mile2, 298,170 km2, and current estimated population of 100,096,496 people (Worldometers 2015)