Philippine Floods Displace Thousands, Raise Questions of Future Resilience

Around Christmas, the Philippines was battered by heavy rain that killed 50 people and displaced more than 50,000. The new year brought no relief, as continuous torrential downpours led to flood emergencies throughout the country.

At least 28 people have died and more than 211,000 have been displaced since January 1, according to the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council, leading President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to declare a “state of calamity” in Misamis Occidental, a province on the southern island of Mindanao.

The floods drenched communities across Mindanao and the Eastern Visayas region, impacting areas that are not usually affected by heavy rainfall. Several towns were evacuated across the eastern islands of Samar and Leyte, which suffered the brunt of damage from 2013’s Typhoon Haiyan. In Mindanao’s southern Zamboanga del Norte region, residents escaped their flooding homes and were rescued by life rafts floating through the streets.

It was an atypical month of rainfall in the Philippines, which usually sees its rainy season end in November.

The country is among the world’s most vulnerable to climate change, despite being responsible for a miniscule amount of global emissions. The vast majority of its 114 million people live and work in low-lying areas vulnerable to typhoons and flash floods.

Marcos vowed to work toward long-term solutions during a visit to Misamis Occidental and neighboring Misamis Oriental, where he oversaw the distribution of aid. Due to inclement weather, the president was forced to cancel several additional stops on his itinerary, including a visit to the flood-devastated nearby city of Oroquieta.

“We are looking at everything to find a solution,” Marcos said. “We will continue to dredge rivers so that water does not come out of the river quickly and we will continue to improve our flood controls.”

“But in the long term, we need to think about how we can do it so that this never happens again, [so] we don’t have this kind of risk anymore.”

It’s unclear, however, what the Philippine government plans to do to mitigate future disasters. Experts and government officials insist the country’s disaster response mechanisms have improved drastically since Typhoon Haiyan in 2013, which killed more than 6,000 people and displaced 4 million. But politicians tend to focus on disaster relief – a natural stage for photo ops – rather than the hard work of building long-term resilience.

“Due to our political culture, much focus was put on disaster relief (where personalities seize opportunities to put themselves in a good light through philanthropy) rather than on disaster prevention (where comprehensive disaster risk management is needed, with science steering the policies),” Joshua Agar, an assistant professor at the University of the Philippines’ Institute of Civil Engineering, told The Washington Post.

Days after Marcos visited flood-stricken areas of Mindanao, he led a Philippine delegation to Davos, where he pitched a proposed sovereign wealth fund to the World Economic Forum. His visit was received coolly by some progressive commentators, who wished Marcos would spend the time responding to floods at home, along with an escalating cost of living crisis that’s seen the prices of household goods – notably, onions – skyrocket.

“People are out there swimming in their homes, trying to save their belongings, while this government is still trying to find its own excuses for this junket in Switzerland,” wrote Herbie Gomez, Rappler’s regional coordinator in Mindanao.

Marcos’ predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte, frequently castigated rich countries for failing to pay for the effects of climate change on smaller countries like the Philippines, demanding that the Global North pay climate reparations.

That put Duterte among a small yet growing chorus of Global South leaders who have pushed for greater loss and damage compensation – which was agreed upon for the first time at last year’s COP27 conference, although many details of the agreement’s implementation remain up in the air.

Marcos has called for faster progress in determining climate reparations, but he’s generally used softer language, preferring to find ways to work with Western countries. However, his own roadmap to securing loss and damage payouts from the West – and, crucially, his plan to build his country’s disaster resilience, especially in poorer communities and southern agricultural areas with limited means to prevent flooding – remain unclear.