Celestial, Froilan A.

Exam (Geog 243)

Political Ecology on Flooding of Coastal Cities in the Philippines

How much unpleasant it is, flooding is a foregoing normalized scenario in the country.
Various factors such as poor urban planning, troubled sewerage system, and lack of mitigation
practices contribute to continuous flooding in our cities. Coastal settlements are more vulnerable
to this situation. In the Geo Lecture Series by Ria Jhoanna Ducusin, a Ph.D candidate from New
York University and a Visiting Research Fellow in UP Department of Geography, she discussed
how political decisions, economic interests, and power relations affect governance and
mitigation of flooding as an environmental hazard in the Philippine settings, partaking her
experience during Typhoon Milenyo in 2006 and Typhoon 2014 in which their house was
extremely destroyed and needs to be permanently relocated. The preliminary focus of her field
work is understanding the causes, experiences, and mitigation of flooding in Bacoor, a coastal
city in Cavite that being the gateway between the province and Metro Manila, have undergone
rapid urban expansion from an agricultural settlement to a predominant low-cost to high-end
residential town with various industrial developments which significantly influenced its land use,
with approximately 86% of land area purposedly expended for such.
Despite continuous urban expansion, Bacoor continuously dealt with flooding hazards,
ranging from ankle-level to exceeding human height water amounts. Flooding incidents mostly
affects residents in the first district (lowland) in the southern portion of the town which was
adjacent to Manila Bay. She points out that even though floods are often caused by natural
disasters such as typhoons, more needs to be known about understandings and experiences of
marginalized communities in relation to socio-economic factors such as land use practices,
urbanization, and poor mitigation, and how governance approaches perpetuate existing
inequalities. Her research questions include how ecological conditions and socio-political
relations create and shape flooding in Bacoor City, and how do urban residents experience
flooding, and what are the intersectional differences in experiences and coping mechanisms.
She introduced a Feminist Political Ecology (FPE) concept in the context of flooding which gives
emphasis on power and gender dynamics through examining how socio-political power systems
intersect with environmental changes, infrastructural exclusions, and crises which contributes to
their prolonged precarity. It also examines how human demographics (gender, religion, socio-
economic status) and various forms of oppression and privilege intersect with the individual’s
vulnerability in flooding occurrences. Her first phase of field research involves a seven-month
ethnographic fieldwork in Bacoor, in which she was able to conduct fifteen (15) key informant
interviews which includes various officials in the local engineering, agriculture, planning and
development, and disaster risk reduction offices, and flood control infrastructure governors in
Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH). She also conducted 150 household
surveys and 60 in-depth interviews in which she was able to gather information on the urban
perspectives and experiences about living in a flood-prone environment. Key findings in her
studies include; first, unique topography of Bacoor in which it serves as catch basin for other
towns in Cavite amplifies flooding hazards, alongside intense rainfall and high tides. Example of
which is when Typhoon Paeng affected the town by which tidal levels reached up to 1.3 meters.
Capitalism impacts also played significant factor. Boom of residential estates and commercial
hubs compromised Bacoor’s water absorption capacity and sewerage systems. Drastic solid
waste accumulation due to population increase also took place. Second, flood control
infrastractures were seen as solutions in flooding problems in Bacoor. Throughout the years, the
local government prioritized construction of flood gateway pumping stations in their project
fundings. They also commissioned locals to be river rangers and conduct coastal clean-ups.
Widening of waterways were also grasped but encountered challenges such as right of way
issues. Lastly, flooding became normalized among residents of Bacoor and learned adaptive
responses. She highlighted interviews from two locals which are both low socio-economic status
and exposed their experiences in past typhoons that brought massive flooding and their
downplays in the city’s flood mitigation response. She divulges that some points that needs to
be explored more includes if there is an existent downplaying of human-made factors in favor of
emphasizing natural explanations, who reaps the benefits of capitalist-driven transformation,
whose interest are being catered in the placement and construction of flood control projects,
and how does these influence the protection of specific areas over others and lastly, if living with
flooding should be normalized and accepted. She concluded her presentation with a quote
which asks how we produce nature and who controls this production of nature. Knowing who
controls the resources is essential in formulating measures to address environmental changes.
She clearly imposes that analysis of class struggle should be studied in studying various
environmental hazards such as flooding. It strengthens the saying that there is no such thing as
ethical consumption in capitalism.
Geographic information systems (GIS) tools have prolongedly been used to study
flooding geohazards and mitigating urban flooding occurrences. For instance, a group of
researchers designed a GIS-based hydrodynamic modeling for urban flood mitigation in the
town of Erbil in the Kurdistan region of Iraq in which using ArcGIS 10.7 software, they were able
to process and generate Digital Elevation Model (DEM) to illustrate watershed delineation in
both 30-meter and 1-meter resolution, study the soil classes and land use cover in the area,
comparing he development of flooded areas based on different rainfall simulations, and
illustrating inundated areas in Erbil during the storm in 2021 (Mustafa, et. al 2023). The same
modelling techniques and areas of study can also be pragmatic in Bacoor, since both towns
have undergone rapid urbanization that induced land use practices. Socio-economic classism is
also existent in both places based on urban planning and development maps shown. Further
studies can give opportunities, most importantly, to design a geohazard map in Bacoor which
illustrates the actual areas that are mostly suspectable to flooding. From here, we can compare
the disaster vulnerability level of settlements in the higher and lower elevation areas. The soil
condition throughout Bacoor can also be studied and mapped out using GIS tools to determine
the effects of land use practices that may have contributed to further flooding incidents. A
perspective map can be designed as well to illustrate the general perspectives of the locals
towards urban flooding mitigation efforts. These efforts potentially provide data to alleviate the
detrimental effects of flooding and other natural disasters as well, whenever applicable.
The most important thing, nevertheless, is the political will of the people who zeniths in
the power relations and various forms of powerplay. The illustrative data generated using the
tools must be pragmatized accordingly to address the actual causes of the prolonged flooding
problems.

REFERENCES:

UP Department of Geography (2024). Heo/Geo Lecture Series 2024-2: Ria Ducusin on coastal
environments and the impacts of flooding. YouTube. Available at https://youtu.be/aJcrY0LIoo4?
si=7zZfDngpdWG5ap-D
Mustafa, A., Szydłowski, M., Veysipanah, M. & Hameed, M. (2023). GIS‐based hydrodynamic
modeling for urban flood mitigationin fast‐growing regions: a case study of Erbil, Kurdistan Region of Iraq.
Nature Scientific Reports. Available at https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-36138-9