When the Water Has Nowhere Else to Go

MANILA — Flooding in the Philippines has become so routine that the images almost arrive with the predictability of the monsoon itself: commuters wading through brown water, stalled vehicles, families carrying children above waist-deep floods, classrooms converted into evacuation centers, and mountains of garbage collecting along waterways.

This August has been no exception. Weeks of southwest monsoon rains, repeatedly enhanced by tropical cyclones, have inundated communities across Luzon and other parts of the country. On Friday, August 28, the government suspended afternoon classes and work in government offices in Metro Manila and several other areas as the habagat continued to bring heavy rain. Earlier this month, tens of thousands of residents had already been evacuated from flooded communities. 

But describing the disaster simply as the consequence of heavy rain misses much of the story.

The Philippines is unquestionably exposed to extreme weather. Geography guarantees that. What increasingly determines whether heavy rainfall becomes catastrophic, however, is what happens to the water after it reaches the ground.

And in too many parts of the country, there is nowhere left for it to go.

More Rain, Falling Faster

During one recent monsoon episode, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said Metro Manila received 201 millimeters of rain in just five hours—roughly 44 percent of the rainfall dumped by Tropical Storm Ondoy over an entire 24-hour period in 2009. Government officials have increasingly described these intense bursts of rainfall as part of a changing climate reality. 

Warmer air can hold more moisture. Warmer seas provide additional energy and water vapor to tropical weather systems. The result does not mean that every storm or flood can be attributed solely to climate change, but the broader scientific trend is clear: a warming climate is increasing the likelihood and severity of extreme rainfall events in many vulnerable regions.

For an archipelago sitting squarely in the western Pacific typhoon belt, that is an especially dangerous development.

Yet rainfall is only half of the Philippine flooding equation.

The other half has been decades in the making.

We Have Changed the Land

Healthy forests, wetlands, floodplains and watersheds function like enormous natural pieces of infrastructure. Forest soil absorbs and slows rainwater. Vegetation stabilizes slopes. Wetlands temporarily store excess water. Rivers and floodplains provide places for that water to spread.

Remove them, pave them over or build on them, and water behaves differently.

Department of Environment and Natural Resources planning documents identify deforestation, inappropriate agricultural conversion, mining and quarrying, urban expansion, inadequate zoning and poor waste management among the forces degrading Philippine watersheds. Earlier watershed studies have similarly linked forest degradation to greater risks of floods and landslides. 

This matters far beyond the mountains where trees are cut.

Water does not respect municipal boundaries.

Rain falling on a degraded upland watershed moves downhill faster, carrying soil and sediment into rivers. Sedimentation makes waterways shallower. Development covers previously absorbent ground with concrete. Houses, roads, subdivisions and commercial districts occupy natural drainage corridors. Then another intense rainstorm arrives.

We often call what follows a natural disaster.

Increasingly, it is a natural hazard colliding with human decisions.

Concrete Does Not Absorb Rain

Metro Manila demonstrates the problem on an enormous scale.

Much of the metropolis has been transformed into an almost continuous landscape of rooftops, highways, parking lots and concrete. Rain that might once have soaked into soil instead becomes runoff almost immediately.

That water enters drainage canals already struggling with sediment, plastic waste and decades of urban development. Some waterways have been narrowed or encroached upon. Low-lying communities have expanded along rivers and creeks because affordable housing elsewhere is scarce.

Then we blame drainage.

Certainly, drainage systems need improvement. Flood-control infrastructure matters enormously, especially in a megacity of more than 13 million people.

But there is a limit to how much engineering can compensate for bad land use.

You can build larger pumping stations and deeper drainage channels. You can dredge rivers and construct flood walls. But if watersheds continue to deteriorate, waterways continue to shrink, permeable land disappears and increasingly intense rainfall arrives within a few hours, the country is essentially building bigger pipes while steadily increasing the amount of water being poured into them.

And garbage makes an already difficult problem worse.

Images from this month's floods showed workers attempting to clear huge accumulations of garbage and debris from waterways in Parañaque after heavy monsoon rains. Solid waste does not explain Philippine flooding by itself—an unfortunate oversimplification sometimes used to blame ordinary citizens—but clogged waterways unquestionably reduce drainage capacity.

The problem is therefore simultaneously climatic, environmental, infrastructural and social.

The Poor Pay the Highest Price

Perhaps the most important part of the flooding story is also the least dramatic on television.

The real cost begins after the camera leaves.

A middle-class employee whose subdivision floods may lose furniture, appliances and a car.

A minimum-wage worker may lose nearly everything.

For families living beside rivers, esteros or low-lying agricultural areas, a flood can destroy a home built slowly over many years. A refrigerator, mattress, school uniform or sack of rice is not easily replaced when household income barely covers everyday expenses.

Missing two or three days of work because transportation has stopped can mean missing two or three days of pay.

Floodwater also carries sewage, chemicals and animal waste, increasing risks of skin infections, gastrointestinal illness and leptospirosis. Children miss school. Small businesses close. Farmers lose crops. Roads become impassable, interrupting the movement of food and goods.

Evacuation itself carries a human cost.

In CALABARZON alone, the Department of Social Welfare and Development reported earlier this month that 170,674 families had been affected, with more than 6,000 families still staying in 149 evacuation centers across Cavite, Batangas, Laguna and Rizal at the time of the report. 

Those numbers are easy to read and even easier to forget.

Each represents someone sleeping on a classroom floor wondering whether the water has entered the house, whether the refrigerator still works, whether tomorrow's shift will be cancelled, whether another landslide will come down the mountain, and where the money for repairs will come from.

That is why flooding is also an inequality story.

Filipinos do not experience the same storm equally.

Resilience Cannot Be the Entire Policy

Filipinos are frequently praised for their resilience after disasters. There is truth in that. Communities feed one another, volunteers organize rescue operations, barangays evacuate residents, relatives send money, and strangers somehow find ways to help.

But resilience should never become an excuse for accepting preventable suffering.

The country cannot stop the habagat. It cannot move itself out of the Pacific. And the Philippines alone cannot stop global climate change.

It can, however, decide what happens to its forests.

It can protect watersheds and wetlands.

It can stop approving development in places where water naturally needs to go.

It can enforce easements along rivers and waterways.

It can build drainage systems based on the rainfall of the future rather than the climate of decades past.

It can improve waste collection and sewage systems.

And it can scrutinize billions of pesos spent on flood-control projects to determine whether they actually reduce flooding rather than merely produce another ribbon-cutting ceremony.

The current floods are therefore not simply another seasonal inconvenience.

They are a warning.

Because the water falling from the sky may be increasingly extreme, but much of what happens after that water reaches the ground remains within human control.

And perhaps that is the uncomfortable truth beneath every photograph of another flooded Philippine street:

The rain may be natural. The disaster does not have to be.