Billion-Peso Flood Control: A Tragedy in Three Acts

So here's what P157 billion buys you in the Philippines: a headline about flooding, and a longer headline about the disease that follows.

At the Unlocking Capital for Sustainability Philippines forum this week, health experts laid out the receipts. Quezon City alone recorded 6,981 dengue cases in the period reviewed — a 155% jump from the year before. Leptospirosis? 521 cases. 74 dead. In one city.

Kids ten and under bore the brunt of the dengue spike. Not because of bad luck. Because the water had nowhere to go.

And here's the part that makes your eye twitch.

That P157 billion the government says it poured into disaster prevention in 2021? Experts at the forum suggested up to 70% of flood control spending may have been lost to substandard construction and — the word nobody at the podium wanted to say out loud — corruption.

Dr. Ramon San Pascual from Healthcare Without Harm put it plainly: The climate crisis is a health crisis. Nobody in that room argued. Because when your flood control is a flood control in name only, you're not preventing disasters. You're just scheduling them.

Dr. Alfredo Mahar Francisco Lagmay of UP Resilience Institute was even more direct: Years of development can become meaningless with just one day of disaster. Which, if you're counting, is exactly how long it takes for a substandard drainage pipe to turn a rainy afternoon into a leptospirosis ward.

The Numbers Don't Lie. They Just Have Poor Architects.

Dengue cases, Quezon City: 6,981 (+155% YoY). Leptospirosis cases: 521. Leptospirosis fatalities: 74. Disaster prevention budget (2021): P157 billion. Flood control money actually working: Unclear. Politicians who've taken responsibility: Silence.

Chester Cluck has seen a lot of floods in Manila. He's seen the water rise past the tricycle tires, past the sari-sari store inventory, past the axle of the jeepney. He's never once seen P157 billion worth of drainage.

What he has seen: politicians holding umbrellas over flood control project signboards while the actual canals choked on garbage.

"The climate crisis is a health crisis," said Dr. San Pascual. Correct. And somewhere in between the crisis and the health response, there's a gap where accountability should be — a gap about P110 billion wide.

Build back better, they say. First maybe build back honest.

Sources: eco-business.com, Healthcare Without Harm Southeast Asia, University of the Philippines Resilience Institute