LOREN LEGARDA: Rethinking Flood Control: Building a Nature-Based Future After Typhoons Tino and Uwan

Описание: Senator Loren Legarda’s Privilege Speech | Rethinking Flood Control: Building a Nature-Based Future After Typhoons Tino and Uwan
November 11, 2025

Mr. President, distinguished colleagues,

Typhoon Tino claimed 232 lives and affected over 4 million Filipinos, while Typhoon Uwan, still unfolding, has already left six dead and displaced 2.4 million. Cebu bore the worst with 150 fatalities, followed by Negros Occidental with 42, and Negros Oriental with 21. These tragedies hit close to home—barely two months after a 6.9-magnitude quake in the same region claimed 79 lives.

This is nature speaking to us clearly: our growth has outpaced our safeguards. Beyond the natural calamities, unchecked mining and reclamation, deforestation, unregulated construction, uncontrolled urban sprawl into no-build zones, poor waste management, and corruption in infrastructure and government clearances have eroded the very foundations of safety and sustainability.

But for decades, we’ve answered floods with concrete—higher walls, longer dikes, deeper drains. Yet every storm proves that concrete alone cannot protect us, especially when it’s weakened by corruption, flawed clearances, or lost as ghost projects.

The Department of Environment and Natural Resources’ Water Resources Management Office recently evaluated over 4,000 flood control projects nationwide. The findings are alarming:

42 percent were problematic — unconstructed, duplicated, or already existing.
Nearly 30 percent were poorly situated — dikes that block natural river flow, protect idle lands, or redirect water into communities.
Some projects, the DENR confirms, were reclamation in disguise, converting riverbanks and wetlands into land development zones.
Even more alarming, the DPWH admitted that many flood control projects lacked Environmental Compliance Certificates, despite being environmentally critical and high-risk. Worse, the agency itself acknowledged that some of these structures have actually worsened flooding and, in fact, should be dismantled altogether. We spent billions for safety. Instead, we engineered vulnerability.

To this, science tells us what experience has long confirmed: flooding cannot be solved by fighting nature; it can only be managed by working with it.

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