The volcanic Molucca islands have provided the world with their precious cloves, which have been highly valued in medicinal properties for millennia. Cloves have antibacterial, antiviral, and analgesic characteristics. They were considered silver bullet cures in medieval epidemics and the early COVID-19 pandemic response. Cloves originated from Ternate Island, the center and regional trade hub of the Molucca Islands. Its cloves had reached Babylonia 4,000 years ago, marking its importance in global trade. Qualitative research was conducted on the 1775 Mount Gamalama eruption’s impact on indigenous knowledge development. To confirm the findings, I conducted field visits, key informant interviews, field observations, and a literature review. Tolire Lake is an apparent landmark in Takome village, which has a sacred white crocodile, a java plum hill, a lush forest, stunning landscapes, and an underwater mythical village. The residents are testaments to human resilience, preserving indigenous knowledge and turning it into disaster risk reduction tools. They built settlements on safer ground and designated parts areas for conservation-based tourism. In addition, modern science introduction enhances disaster early warning and alert systems and empowers indigenous communities. Understanding indigenous knowledge and wisdom is critical to building resilience and sustainability through disaster risk reduction (DRR) efforts. Indigenous knowledge produces lessons in environmental protection, social justice, and economic growth. The world can learn from indigenous and scientific knowledge combined to sustain the island, its people, and its prosperity.

The geographical location of Catanduanes makes it known as the island of howling winds. As the years passed, typhoons came to the island more frequently and with higher magnitudes due to climate change. With this phenomenon, Catandunganons faced risks not just for their lives but for their sources of income. Mixed methods of research were used through a community-participatory approach and non-probability sampling method using a purposive sample to include participants who represent a wide range of experiences and perspectives related to the vulnerability, exposure, and sensitivity of the communities for the past ten years (October 2010- October 2020). Findings revealed that selected coastal communities in Virac experienced typhoons very frequently for the past ten years; Magnesia del Norte was considered highly sensitive in terms of biophysical and socioeconomic aspects while communities such as Magnesia del Sur, Marilima, and Batag were considered moderately sensitive. The coastal communities of Magnesia del Norte and Marilima have an extremely high adaptive capacity. This implies that these communities can easily adapt to the hazards of climate change; Magnesia del Norte and Marilima were the coastal communities that were extremely vulnerable to the hazards of climate change. It was further recommended that selected coastal communities be considered in providing sustainable livelihood programs since they are extremely vulnerable to climate change hazards. Furthermore, coastal communities must also be engaged in disaster-risk reduction training to raise their awareness of responding to a disaster; let vulnerable communities participate in planning, design, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of disaster risk activities as they play key roles in identifying the risks they may face during a disaster, and enhance the capacities of the local communities to lessen the vulnerability.

Research in human ecology and sustainability holds significant importance in addressing global challenges related to the environment, society, and the well-being of the current and future generations. There is an urgent need for a platform to inform new knowledge, practices, policies, and behaviors that contribute toward a more sustainable, resilient, and harmonious coexistence between humans and their environment. The Journal of Human Ecology and Sustainability (JHES) aims to publish interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, and transdisciplinary research on all aspects of human-environment interactions, community development, and other fields of social science that link with the people, organizations, and government to achieve human-ecological security. This note, which summarizes the contributions in the first volume of the journal, provides a brief background of the transformation of the Journal of Human Ecology to JHES, the official academic publication of the College of Human Ecology, University of the Philippines Los Baños.