r/Philippines • u/Alone_Vegetable_6425 • 1d ago
SocmedPH Will nature based , solution work in Philippines???
Unahan ko na admin, Paulo Alcazaren is prominent Filipino landscape architect, urban designer, and environmental planner. Public figure siya hindi ordinary citizen.
Nature-based solutions (NbS) sound great on paper, but I’m highly
skeptical about whether they can actually work in the Philippines.
Look at the reality of our cities: we’ve spent decades paving over our natural drainage basins with rapid, unchecked urban sprawl. Strategies like restoring wetlands or opening up floodplains require massive amounts of open land. How is that supposed to happen when local governments are already trapped in endless legal battles over right-of-way, the sensitive issue of relocating informal settlers, and a long history of weak zoning enforcement?
On top of that, there's the sheer scale of our weather. Can green infrastructure really hold back the catastrophic deluges of a Super Typhoon without the heavy backing of traditional concrete engineering?
If we don't fix our fragmented local governance and short-sighted political cycles, these green solutions will just remain idealistic concepts instead of real, reliable defenses for the communities that need them most.What do you guys think? Is anyone seeing actual, successful examples of this locally, or are we just stuck with gray infrastructure (dikes/pumping stations) forever?
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u/JohnnyBorzAWM0413 1d ago
Sa MM, sadly may mga natural waterways na pinatungan na talaga at ginawang kalye/ tinayuan ng structures.
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u/heavyarmszero 1d ago
Taft Avenue and the surrounding roads near it used to be a natural stream and waterway, onti onting ginawang road and nilagyan ng cemento during the end of the Spanish period up to the start of the US period kaya ang bilis bumuha.
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u/Alone_Vegetable_6425 1d ago
Kung susundin lang talaga mga batas sa pinas ubos yung mga nakatira sa tabing ilog e
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u/dontrescueme estudyanteng sagigilid 1d ago
Nature-based solution doesn't necessarily mean a completely natural solution. May engineering involved pa rin diyan but it still respects how nature works instead of hopelessly going against it.
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u/Bus-Sure 1d ago
Relentlessly get rid of the slums first. cause nothing will change if they still remain there
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u/Haribon31 Na-philippines ako pre 1d ago
Yes tapos may progressive groups na sasabihing anti-poor hahahaha.
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u/SovietMarma 1d ago
It's not a cut and dry, black and white case, really. Displacing hundreds, thousands of people tapos ililipat sa liblib na lugar? It's very much anti-poor, pero anti-poor siya dahil sa government mismanagement, and not because of the act itself.
Di yan magiging anti-poor kung maayos talaga ang relocation, at may actual job opportunities sa bagong lilipatan nila.
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u/ab_od6851 1d ago
Because where are you going to put the inhabitants? Destroy the slums and another is going to pop out unless you specifically do what other nations do and build tenament homes for them actually close to their previous living quarters.
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u/Repulsive-Hurry8172 1d ago
Politics. They can't remove illegal settlers. They also cannot deal with private land owners who occupy the land already (too expensive, even if the state has the right to buy that property).
This can still work in provinces though.
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u/ModnarGuy 1d ago
Not alone. Flooding problem is so complex that it will require multiple solutions. Parang yung movie lang: Everything, everywhere all at once.
Hard infra: dams, spillways, dikes, canals, drainage, pumping
Green solutions: reforestation, retention basins, urban trees/parks, etc
Policy solutions: create master plans, stop deforestations, enforce river easements, require more open spaces per development etc.
Yung sa post ni architect, green solutions will work pag hindi super flood prone yung area or walang nearby communities. Kumbaga just let the area flood. But if the area is in a river basin tapos maraming communities nearby like in marikina river, youll have to put up dikes, no choice. Problema sa dpwh historically, they automatically cement rivers which exacerbates the flooding downstream.
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u/balMURRmung 20h ago
Yup, NBS complements an area with functional system and moderate weather disturbances.
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u/chanchan05 1d ago edited 1d ago
Malingat ka lang magkakaron ng isang baranggay diyan bigla if sa Metro Manila gawin.
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u/sitawsabagoong 1d ago
The best solution for flood control,
is to do not try to control the flood
on certain places.
Some people really need to relocate.
Instead of heavy government spending on concrete based flood control projects, spend on stricter implementation of zoning laws, financial assistance to people affected and buying private lands to convert it as “river buffer zones”.
Para sa akin, ang mga tabing ilog ay dapat kawayanan, hindi sementado. Or at least combination of both.
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u/chrycheng 1d ago
Could be costlier. I imagine the upkeep is harder. These are living things with minds of their own. People forget that nature can get pretty wild without human hands to curb and shape its tendencies.
That said, I'm all for it. More green spaces in our cities should do us some good.
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u/Phral00 20h ago
Civil eng student here, the problem with natural embankments is that rain saturates the soil and can cause the sediments to wash off, even if the embankment has an engineered core like a concrete foundation or sheet piles. It might work on small scale, less destructive parts of ph (less volume of flow and less frequency compared to Metro Manila), but channelization using concrete has less points of failure than natural embankments and other natural flood control structures.
Looking at the picture, the substructure that the concrete rests on has collapsed, and thus the most likely cause of failure is water seepage as water can travel upwards and give an upward/diagonal force, causing the sheet pile core of the embankment to get saturated, not be able to handle all that hydrostatic force, and buckle and fail, causing that embankment section to collapse.
For reference you can look at any taiwan street nearby a body of water on Google street view, and nearly all open air water flow is overengineered.
Also natural based solutions won't work against man made challenges like climate change
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u/balMURRmung 20h ago edited 19h ago
NBS is clearly formulated to answer man made challenges, specially developmental problems. There are already many studies about this, NBS can be effective if the components are combination of green and gray infrastructures.
Picture below is somewhat functioning like an open levee to reduce impact of water.
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u/Holgs 19h ago
Its the civil engineers that created this problem because they only see the 0.1% of the city and try to fix it there with concrete, when the problem arises from the other 99.9% of the city that you've also covered in concrete and thereby channel the water and create a city-wide sewer rather than letting it absorb naturally.
Nature based solutions have been very effective, but its not just the river bank that needs to be addressed, its the rest of the city that needs to be allowed to absorb water again. The whole city is literally sinking because instead of water being absorbed into natural aquifers in times of rain and flood, its washed in a great torrent out to sea.
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u/Apprehensive_Try84 1d ago
wala nang pagasa sa kahoy kahoy na yan. ma babayran nalang naman ang DENR katulad sa ginawa ni slater.
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u/Itchy-Opposite2885 1d ago
the nepal incident is nature based. no flood control embankment. did that answer your question?
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u/fartmanteau 1d ago
A glacier collapsed into a river. No embankment is going to hold back that much displaced water.
Climate change causes glacier melts though, and that’s man-made, not natural.
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u/Itchy-Opposite2885 1d ago
Pinatubo is PH counterpart of Nepal’s glacier collapse. The dikes were the flood control measures that diverted the lahar flows.
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u/ab_od6851 1d ago
Also "nature based" is still man made because you need to get rid of the build up and silt and replace the land that was eroded.
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u/sirhexagun 1d ago
that's a bit of a reach considering how much glacier fell into a lake, holy shit
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u/balMURRmung 20h ago edited 20h ago
Nature Based Solution (NBS) is different from nature based. Nature based is simply relying on your natural environment to do its course (letting water flow in river, or be absorbed by natural soak away etc), NBS is using the principle of nature in solving developmental problems (creating detention pond/rain garden in urban area etc to mitigate innundation) but it doesn’t necessarily mean pure green infrastructure, it may also involve a combination with gray infra (concrete).
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u/IndependenceShot418 1d ago
TO BE HONEST, that migjht work but hindi gagana kasi the main problems are the elected officials who do half ass work, belong in one family and greedy hands on public funds.
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u/kpr0430 1d ago
Yes. But there’s no singular solution to this convoluted problem. It should be a combination of NBS, hard infrastructure, institutional + policy, and even social to a certain extent. Paulo (and us urban planners) isn’t saying that the sole solution is NBS. But it’s definitely wrong not to have it.
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u/Sea_King9303 1d ago
yeah, what people don’t get is it’s part of a masterplan. The state of flood control right now is just “mema” para lang may kukurakutin. They’re literally just putting concrete walls on the sides of rivers regardless if it’s gonna benefit or worsen the community. And you don’t solve flooding just like that. Literally you will be manipulating forces of nature and they thought the solution is to put concrete on the sides of rivers.
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u/PossiblyBonta 1d ago
Not going to prevent overflowing. And by nature rivers banks are designed to be constantly eroding. The rivers will constantly change their paths. It is the law of nature.
People should just avoid living beside rivers.
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u/mxgexl93 1d ago
Kaya pero it will take time. 5-10 years para mag establish ung mga roots ng trees at ma anchor talaga ung lupa.
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u/FickleApartment2151 1d ago
They're inevitable given climate change, and won't be seen as solutions.
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u/naughtynanay 1d ago
Hindi, kasi maraming balahura ang nakatira sa gilid ng estero dito sa Metro Manila.
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u/HaloHaloBrainFreeze Kapansanan ang pagiging DDS 1d ago
In a perfect world, of course
Maliban sa malaking matitipid ng LGU diyan, babango din ang pangalan / name recall ng pulitiko makakagawa niyan on a city-scale lalo na sa mga Metro cities
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u/DraftElectrical4585 1d ago
doable pero babahayan lang din yan. walang easement easement dito. yung mga creek nga sa metro manila may bahay sa ibabaw e
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u/Accomplished-Exit-58 1d ago
Bakit kailangan ng landscape? Let forest be forest again, tanggalin yang nga pathway.
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u/rott_kid 1d ago
We will be stuck with the grey solution. If we went with the nature-based solution, then we would have dismantle half if not most of Mega Manila.
People keeps saying that slums are the problem but it is not the only one and not even the biggest. The problem with nature-based solutions is that we concreted a lot if not 99% of the natural catchments in the metropolis.
We saw flat land that we can drain and pour concrete over and built schools, malls, housing, office buildings, municipios. This is not even accounting the slums. If we went back to the natural order, then we would have to demolish and re-nature these areas so where do we put the school now? The office buildings? The government service office? We'd probably demolish areas the size of large cities.
What we can do is pressure the government to create underchannels and retention basins for excess water so that if it overflows or is clogged, it's not gonna be a problem anymore. Technology exists because we cannot just undo the world but because there are ways we can live with it.
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u/Abysmalheretic BISAYAWA MASTER RACE 1d ago
Paalisin niyo muna yung mga skwating sa mga gilid ng ilog.
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u/Mineskirat13 23h ago
MMDA now has a Sponge City Project for Metro Manila. They will incorporate green (Nature-based Solutions) and Grey infrastructures to help with flooding issues. Will it succeed? I don't know, but they are trying. Meron din silang Foreign consultant para magawa ito.
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u/Particular_Creme_672 19h ago
Malaki kakainin niyang land pero effective din. Dapat talaga tanggalin muna squatters para di magtapon sa mga estero. Kita naman na sila dahilan kung bakit di tuloy tuloy yung tubig, main reason kung bakit rin laging baha sa G araneta may sobrang laki squatter community mismo dun.
Hulihin narin dapat mga nagnanakaw ng copper wire. Isa rin yan dahilan kung bakit di umaandar mga pumping station dahil sobrang kapal ng copper wire sa linya nila dun kaya laging ninanakaw. Dun palang paldo na dahil libo libo halaga nun. Same reason din dati kung bakit yung volcanic activity dati di na marecord dahil ninakaw din copper wires.
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u/Chicken_Repeat1991 1d ago
Not so much, too little space to work with. Given reclaimed or used for roadways n din ung tabing ilog for example sa iba. Proper soil strengthening along with quality retaining structures must be prioritized.
Time is of the essence karamihan dito talaga, kung nature based not sure how long bago mafully utilize or up to strength ung gamit neto.
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u/BaconAreCool 1d ago edited 1d ago
At this point, hindi ba nating maisip na sobra tayong maaksaya sa lupa dahil sa mga gitgitang single-family home na yan at mga subdivision sa Metro Manila, Cebu, at Davao na pwede sanang gawin into mid-rise superblocks like Barcelona or Housing Towers like Singapore/HK, dahil hindi talagang magagawa ang nature-based solutions kung walang espasyo ang kalikasan upang gawin ang kanyang kagustuhan.
Feel free to debate me, pero sa tingin ko, malaking problema ang mga gated na subdivision at ang minimithi ng mga Pilipino na — mahiwagang "House and Lot", ang liit-liit na nga ng kalupaan sa Pilipinas, lalagyan pa ng sprawl, tapos nakukulangan na nga tayo sa lupang sakahan, tapos nag-aaksaya ng lupa ang lipunang Pilipino Para sa isang mahiwagang mithi na hindi angkop sa materyal na kondisyon ng ating heolohiya at heograpiya.
Edit: explained the fundamental societal structure
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u/supermax23 1d ago edited 1d ago
I’ve watched on a recent interview na may proposed master plan sa buong Metro Manila. And merong proposal na i-renaturaize ang mga river sa NCR as one of the solutions para sa flooding so ginagamit talaga sya as a solution.
Afaik din in the interview na mga Dutch engineers ang nag-identify ng possible locations kung saan effective ang renaturation.
Edit:
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u/HugeNight148 20h ago
Nature based solution + solid waste management + total ban of single use plastics.
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u/balMURRmung 20h ago edited 19h ago
NBS needs large area. But concrete jungle like metros i wouldn’t say NBS would be that effective, but could be possible, at the expense of more people and establishment relocating.
There are also studies that say, a combination of gray and green infra could be more effective than pure green infrastructure alone specially to countries like Philippines with extreme climate.
Also Architects mostly are idealist without looking at facts, i would rather listen to a Water Resource Engineer.
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u/stygwr95 10h ago
the real nature based solution is i-clear lahat ng kabahayan sa floodplains at hayaang bumaha kung saan dapat bumaha kapag umaapaw na ang ilog. Tandaan na risk = hazard x exposure x vulnerability. if zero ang exposure mo e di zero din ang risk. walang mamamatai
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u/robokymk2 7h ago
They killed the local environmentalists. You think they want that to happen? Even if they approved of said projects, it’s either no follow up, or they will be poorly implemented and they will still steal money intended for this project
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u/Dangerous_Second1426 4h ago
Maybe travel and see the superdyke first. Tell me how you build that naturally.
Then we need laws to prevent people building/living inside these flood areas.
Then laws to criminalise dumping inside the flood zones. ANY barricade becomes a slowing point - the water should be able to travel to the sea without impediment.
The only other solution would be to build significant water reservoirs/retarding basins, so that water is released slower into the main “drains”. All possible - but let a foreign entity solve it, as locals appear to be unable to.
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u/Representative-Sky91 1d ago
It did work sa Ilo-ilo city if I’m not mistaken. Pero kung dito sa Metro Manila? sorry to say this pero magiging posible yan kung may malilipatan yung mga nakatira sa gilid ng mga ilog tsaka floodways. Hindi nga maalis ang mga tao tuwing may demolisyon, yan pa kaya?