17/09/2025
𝘽𝙖𝙝𝙖 𝙥𝙞𝙜𝙞𝙡𝙖𝙣, 𝙝𝙪𝙬𝙖𝙜 𝙥𝙖𝙜𝙠𝙖𝙠𝙞𝙩𝙖𝙖𝙣. 𝙉𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙖𝙡 𝙇𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙐𝙨𝙚 𝘼𝙘𝙩 𝙞𝙥𝙖𝙜𝙡𝙖𝙗𝙖𝙣!
𝘽𝙖𝙝𝙖 𝙥𝙞𝙜𝙞𝙡𝙖𝙣, 𝙝𝙪𝙬𝙖𝙜 𝙥𝙖𝙜𝙠𝙖𝙠𝙞𝙩𝙖𝙖𝙣. 𝙉𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙖𝙡 𝙇𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙐𝙨𝙚 𝘼𝙘𝙩 𝙞𝙥𝙖𝙜𝙡𝙖𝙗𝙖𝙣!
With the recent events highlighting the massive corruption surrounding flood control infrastructure projects along with the failure to protect various flood-prone and vulnerable areas in the country, it is apparent that infrastructure-based solutions are not enough and should not be treated as the sole flood mitigating measure by the government.
We in Campaign for Land Use Policy Now (CLUP Now)! believe that more than the flood control projects, rational and science-based national land use planning is a viable, cost-effective, and sustainable measure to flood mitigation. Instead of shelling out billions of pesos and providing leeway for corrupt contractors and politicians, the government must adopt proactive and anticipatory measures in ensuring that vulnerable areas and Filipinos are protected from hazards caused by massive flooding.
With globalization pressures, demand for land and land resources intensifies, placing our ecosystems and communities under grave threat. Extractive businesses continue to encroach upon our agricultural lands and forest areas. Agricultural lands are converted for real estate development, and commercial and industrial ventures dredge our sea floors – often with little regard for long-term environmental consequences and imbalanced perspectives between ecological and economic benefits. The disparity between urgent ecological protection and economic interests highlights the urgent need for a genuine bottom-up, participatory approach to land use planning that involves and highlights the needs of farmers, indigenous peoples, and local communities. Improper land use planning not only exacerbates our degrading natural buffers against flooding, droughts, and other disasters, but also deepens existing social inequities. Rural and indigenous communities are further marginalized and displaced from their lands and livelihoods, severing their connection to their traditional and indigenous practices of forest, land, water, and food stewardship. Denying their rights to land and resource governance extinguishes our last hope of protecting/restoring our forests, and securing food and water.
Recent reports show that widespread and massive flooding have caused irreparable damage to farmers in the countryside with many farmlands submerged and destroyed rendering crops planted as useless and not viable for selling. Worse, farmlands that have never been prone to heavy rains are now heavily affected and flooded. This leads to farmers being forced to suffer substantial economic losses.
Studies and anecdotal evidence from our partner farming communities show that rampant illegal and improper land conversion increases the vulnerability of farmlands to flash floods due to natural waterways being blocked by artificial, man-made developments such as the construction of subdivisions and industrial sites.
Fishers remain one of the poorest sectors in the country. They continue to fight for their fishing grounds and mangrove areas that are being reclaimed, and for their settlements near their livelihood—struggles that could have been alleviated if we have a national land use policy. But instead of paying attention to the plight of poor fishers and passing NLUA, our government leaders colluded with self-interested individuals to pocket our money and got themselves busy gambling. Our fishers could have cast their nets more, if they had not cast our money away!
Corruption over flood control projects currently hounds the government and the private sector. Clearly, flooding needs to be addressed as climate change worsens and typhoons become stronger and more frequent. What is overlooked, however, is that mining causes flooding. Mining-affected communities report soil erosion and flooding, which they attribute to mining operations. According to them, there were rarely floods in their communities prior to mining. Proper land use planning should therefore involve a rationalized approach to mining and not the current unhampered and indiscriminate large-scale mining in many areas.
For decades, the government has relocated hundreds of thousands of urban poor families to off-city resettlement sites to give way to flood control projects. Far removed from their sources of livelihood, these families languish in deeper poverty, yet the flood woes in our cities continue to worsen. With proper land use planning and enforcement, the urban poor can remain in the cities, in communities that are safe from floods and close to economic opportunities.
As the climate crisis continues to exacerbate, the safety of every Filipino is at stake. Stronger typhoons would continue to flood our homes. Intense heat and rains would cancel more school classes. Increasing sea levels would submerge coastal and low-lying farming communities. Properties damaged, development disrupted, and lives lost. Now more than ever, we need a just, rational, and efficient national land use policy to manage our land and water resources to make our systems climate resilient. And with all of the manifestations of the different sectors, we reiterate our call for the 20th Congress to pass the National Land Use Act (NLUA).
NLUA aims to provide a national policy framework on land use through the following mechanisms embedded in its provisions:
1. The proposed law enumerates specific categories of land use planning such as protection, production, settlements, and infrastructure land use.
A national land use commission is to be formed and is tasked to coordinate local land use plans;
2. The formation of a national physical framework plan that will serve as the guide for national land and resource use. Regional and provincial framework plans as well as Comprehensive Land Use Plans are also mandated to be formed to guide LGUs; and
3. NLUA imposes penalties for illegal land conversion and non-compliance to the law.
We maintain that with strong and participatory mechanisms provided by NLUA, we have a cost-effective, inclusive, and sustainable flood mitigation measure. It has been more than 30 years since the NLUA was first filed in the 9th Congress and 3 decades later, the bill remains pending especially at the Senate. More than those constructed with steel and concrete, effective and corruption-free flood control can be through nature-based solutions and science-based land use planning. #
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Alyansa Tigil Mina
Asian NGO Coalition for Agrarian Reform and Rural Development - ANGOC
Center for Agrarian Reform and Rural Development - Pilipinas
John J. Carroll Institute on Church and Social Issues
KAISAHAN
National Rural Women Coalition (PKKK)
