Author(s): Jhesset O. Enano

Long-term plans needed to protect Metro Manila’s most vulnerable from rising seas

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Disaster risk experts say that Metro Manila’s poor urban planning and land use policies are factors that increase its vulnerability to climate change. These will deepen the inequalities among the 13 million people who live in the national capital and will affect their capacity to withstand shocks.


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Engineering approaches, such as the construction of sea walls and dikes, and flood control pumps, are necessary mitigations. But disaster risk experts say the government should be taken to task if the communities these measures seek to protect were displaced or alienated in the process.

Vonne Villanueva, the disaster risk reduction and management officer of Navotas, said the local government decided not to completely wall off the coast as that could affect the city’s more than 8,800 fishers. Several openings were made along the 3.7-kilometer coastal dike where fishing boats could pass to get to the bay.

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Nature-based solutions, such as planting mangroves to protect coastlines, should complement these engineering strategies, said Rosalie Reyes, who leads the Coastal Sea Level Rise Project Philippines that studied the sea level changes in the country’s coasts.

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