27/08/2026
๐๐ซ๐๐ฒ ๐๐ง๐๐ซ๐๐ฌ๐ญ๐ซ๐ฎ๐๐ญ๐ฎ๐ซ๐ ๐๐๐๐ฉ๐ฌ ๐
๐๐ข๐ฅ๐ข๐ง๐ ๐๐ฌ. ๐๐ญ'๐ฌ ๐๐ข๐ฆ๐ ๐๐ฎ๐ซ ๐๐๐ฐ๐ฌ ๐๐๐ฎ๐ ๐ก๐ญ ๐๐ฉ.
Policy Advocacy Series #1
Flooding season after flooding season, Filipinos watch the same story repeat: concrete flood walls, drainage canals, and dikes, many of them now under public scrutiny following the flood control corruption controversies, fail to hold back the water, while the ecosystems that could have absorbed it (wetlands such as mangroves, swamps, and floodplains) have been paved over, reclaimed, converted, or left to degrade. We keep building more grey, and we keep flooding anyway.
There is a better way, and it already has a name: Green Infrastructure (GI) and Nature-Based Solutions (NbS), forests and wetlands managed and, in some cases, engineered, to do the same job flood walls and drainage systems do, only more resiliently, more affordably, and with co-benefits and ecosystem services no concrete structure can offer.
A bill that would finally make this the default, not the afterthought, is now pending before the 20th Congress: the Green Infrastructure and Nature-Based Solutions for Sustainable Development Act, filed in substitution of several earlier House bills. It deserves urgent passage.
๐๐ญ'๐ฌ ๐๐ฅ๐ซ๐๐๐๐ฒ ๐ฐ๐จ๐ซ๐ค๐ข๐ง๐ , ๐ก๐๐ซ๐'๐ฌ ๐ญ๐ก๐ ๐ฉ๐ซ๐จ๐จ๐.
The Philippines doesn't have to imagine what green-grey infrastructure looks like. It's already on the ground:
โข In Ajuy, Iloilo, round-mound breakwaters were piloted with the Zoological Society of LondonโPhilippines, designed to protect mangrove stands while still providing coastal defense, proving green and grey don't have to be traded off against each other.
โข In Concepcion, Iloilo (Barangay Bagongon), a community-led green-grey project combining sediment-trapping fences, locally sourced rock breakwaters, and over 110,000 mangrove seedlings across 11 hectares, cutting storm-surge exposure for hundreds of households while creating coconut-based livelihoods for local fisherfolk.
โข In Malolos, Bulacan, the Philippines' first constructed NbS coastal protection pilot, under the North Manila Bay Flood Protection Strategy (a Bulacan provincial government initiative supported by the Netherlands Embassy and Royal HaskoningDHV). Facing chronic tidal flooding and gradual land loss, the project combines bamboo and oyster breakwaters to cut wave energy; oyster bags to help reef habitat recover, and sediment traps that gradually rebuild the seabed to support mangrove regrowth, a direct, low-cost alternative to concrete seawalls for a sinking coastal community.
Internationally, the Netherlands' Room for the River program, which restored natural floodplains along the Rhine, Meuse, Waal, and IJssel after catastrophic 1990s floods, is one of the most cited proofs that giving rivers room to flood safely can outperform ever-higher dikes.
These aren't fringe ideas. They're documented, funded, and replicable models and climate-smart designs, the bill simply asks the government to make them the rule, not the exception.
๐๐ก๐ ๐๐ฅ๐ข๐ฆ๐๐ญ๐ ๐๐ซ๐ข๐ฌ๐ข๐ฌ ๐ข๐ฌ ๐ง๐จ๐ญ ๐ ๐๐ฎ๐ญ๐ฎ๐ซ๐ ๐ฉ๐ซ๐จ๐๐ฅ๐๐ฆ.
Every typhoon season, every flash flood, every coastal community losing ground to erosion and storm surge is a reminder: climate adaptation and mitigation are not something to plan for later. They are something the Philippines is being forced to do right now, in real time, with the infrastructure decisions being made today. Nature-based solutions are one of the few tools that deliver both climate adaptation (flood and storm-surge protection) and climate mitigation (carbon sequestration through wetlands and forests) at the same time and at a lower long-term cost than grey infrastructure alone.
๐๐ก๐๐ญ ๐๐จ๐๐ฌ ๐ญ๐ก๐ ๐๐ข๐ฅ๐ฅ ๐๐๐ญ๐ฎ๐๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฒ ๐๐จ?
At its core, the bill would institutionalize GI and NbS as the preferred and primary approach, not just an option, for national development, climate adaptation, and disaster risk reduction. It creates a National Green Infrastructure Council (NGIC), chaired by DEPDev and co-chaired by DENR and DPWH, to coordinate implementation across all relevant agencies and mandates DPWH to reform its engineering and design standards so that GI becomes a default practice, not an exception, in flood management, transport, and water and sanitation projects. Most significantly, it introduces a mandatory Green-First Infrastructure Options Analysis: before any flood control, drainage, slope stabilization, or coastal protection project can be approved, proponents must show through a full lifecycle cost analysis that green or hybrid alternatives are technically unfeasible before a grey-only design can even be considered, and DENR concurrence becomes a prerequisite for ECC issuance. In other words, grey infrastructure would need to justify itself, not the other way around.
The bill also builds the financing and protection architecture GI needs to scale: a National Green Infrastructure Fund for LGUs, civil society, and communities; Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) mechanisms and local stormwater management fees that create sustainable revenue streams for stewardship; fiscal incentives for private investment under the CREATE Act; and the legal category of Designated Green Infrastructure (DGI), which gives critical ecosystems, wetlands such as mangroves and floodplains performing flood-control functions, formal protection against conversion, with explicit safeguards for ancestral domains under the Indigenous Peoples' Rights Act. Taken together, these provisions move GI and NbS from being a nice-to-have pilot project to a nationally financed, legally protected, and institutionally mandated standard.
๐๐ก๐๐ญ ๐๐๐ง ๐ฒ๐จ๐ฎ ๐๐จ?
The Philippines cannot afford another flood season built on the same failed assumptions.
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Tag your Representative and Senator and ask them to support and prioritize the passage of the Green Infrastructure and Nature-Based Solutions Act.
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Share this post, most Filipinos don't yet know this bill exists.
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Follow the bill's progress through the House Committee on Climate Change and push for its swift deliberation and passage.
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Cite this bill in your own advocacy, LGU engagements, or community consultations on flood control and coastal protection.
Grey infrastructure alone has already cost us, in pesos, in trust, and in lives lost to floods it was supposed to prevent. Green Infrastructure and Nature-Based Solutions are not a substitute for accountability; they are the resilient, transparent, and cost-effective alternative Filipinos deserve.
