The price of flood control failure

Once again, the rains have come—and once again, our cities, towns, and provinces are submerged in flood. The latest floodings triggered by the southwest monsoon or “habagat” have laid bare not just our vulnerability to nature, but our failure to prepare for it.

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The calamity is no longer simply a natural disaster, but the cumulative result of decades of mismanagement and underinvestment. This is further aggravated by climate change.

Each monsoon season follows the same tragic script: families evacuated, lives lost, roads rendered impassable, homes destroyed. The difference lies not in the severity of the floods, but in the silence that follows the deluge. It is a silence that must now be broken.

Year after year, flood control and disaster risk reduction programs are allotted billions of pesos from the national budget. And yet, the same communities get flooded in the same way, often with worse consequences. True, climate change is a contributing factor in overwhelming whatever efforts the government has taken. But the troubling question is: Was the budget fully utilized for flood mitigation?