Efforts to rehabilitate Tacloban from the devastation wrought by typhoon Haiyan need to focus on making this central Philippine city climate-resilient.

This will ensure that the city won't suffer again from another massive loss of life and property caused by extreme weather events such as Haiyan. Tacloban is one of the most vulnerable Philippine cities to climate change and is thus likely to be pummeled again by strong typhoons and heavy flooding.

"We should rebuild a better Tacloban city," Voltaire Alferez, national coordinator of Aksyon Klima (Philippine Climate Network) said an interview with Xinhua. Alferez said structures and buildings that will be built should be able to survive the possible disasters caused by a shifting climate.

Typhoon Haiyan, one of the world's strongest storms recorded in history, hit central Philippines in November 2013, and killed over 6,000 people, affected 16 million people and damaged more than 30 billion pesos (667 million U.S. dollars) worth of property and crops.

Haiyan wreaked havoc in the Visayas region, but it was Tacloban city in Leyte province which have the most casualties owing to a storm surge that smashed its coastal communities.

Haiyan showed how vulnerable Tacloban city was to climate change - a fact that was revealed in a study issued last month by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and the Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) Foundation.

According to the study, "Business Risk Assessment and the Management of Climate Change Impacts", Tacloban is within the " jaws of a climate sandwich." Located on the the northeastern coast of Leyte, Tacloban doesn't only sit inside the typhoon belt but also faces the eastern seaboard which exposes this urban center to climate-related risks.

The study said Tacloban's weather is getting "wetter" as demonstrated by the sharp rise in its average annual rainfall - from 1,853 millimeters in 1998 to 4,768 mm in 2011. Cyclones were also getting stronger in the last five years.

This doesn't bode well for a city susceptible to heavy flooding and landslides. Floods will submerge its low-lying wetlands while landslides can obliterate its upland villages.

The all too real danger posed by Tacloban's geographical location and changing weather patterns mean it's necessary for local officials to rebuild this city into a city that can adapt and mitigate the risks brought by climate change.

The WWF-BPI study suggested that since the city sits at an average elevation of barely 3 meters above sea level, local authorities must continue its efforts to upgrade the drainage system. They also need to stabilize upland areas and impounding runoff for urban and agricultural use.

Presidential Adviser for Rehabilitation and Recovery Panfilo M. Lacson said the rehabilitation plan includes imposing a 40-meter setback for all facilities from the shoreline, something that may not be possible as this rule couldn't be applied to beach resorts.

He added that structures that will be rebuilt in Tacloban and other areas that were hit by Haiyan should be able to withstand winds of up to 250 kilometers per hour and an intensity 9 earthquake.

But as Rosa Perez, senior research fellow at the Manila Observatory, notes, it's not enough to delineate certain areas to be no-build areas as most areas of Tacloban city are near the coast.

"We can't have an absolute no-build zone, there should be selective banning instead," she said, adding that local officials need to asses Tacloban's areas, categorize what areas have higher risks of being affected by disasters and decide whether these areas should be considered as no-build zones.

U.K.-based Oxfam International said Haiyan "brutally exposed" the Philippines' limited capacity to prepare and mitigate damages brought by strong typhoons and other natural disasters that will be brought by climate change.

In its briefing notes issued in December, Oxfam said Philippine authorities and international donors need to invest more on climate change adaptation and disaster risks reduction. These investments must be scaled to a level commensurate with the scale and rise in risks, and the number of people exposed to them.

Funding, however, seems to be the least of the Philippines. According to the U.N. Office of the Coordinator for Humanitarian Assistance, total foreign aid donations to Haiyan relief reached over 600 million U.S. dollars.

Lacson has also tapped the private sector to lead rehabilitation efforts, with some of the country's biggest companies volunteering to "adopt" some areas damaged by Haiyan including PLDT, San Miguel Corp., International Container Terminal Services Inc., Ayala Corp. and SM Group of Companies.