Searching for his missing father, Dion Angelo de la Rosa waded through floodwaters in Caloocan, a city in Metro Manila prone to severe flooding. Dion found his father after three days, detained by the police under an archaic law over a street game of kara y krus (heads or tails). After two days, Dion was with fever, and soon after died from leptospirosis. Death and illness from leptospirosis is avoidable. And yet in the Philippines this is a recurring health distress. The failure of flood control infrastructure, sanitation and solid waste management, inaccessible and expensive healthcare makes the monsoon and typhoon season in the Philippines deadly.
In his 2024 State of the Nation Address (SONA), President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. highlighted flood control infrastructure as one of the legacy projects of his administration. It was therefore with frustration that Marcos in his 2025 SONA, he assailed the corrupt to “have some shame” His comments came in the wake of Congressional and Senate hearings that found that large amounts of flood-control infrastructure funds were siphoned off to contractors and politicians. These hearings exposed a pandora’s box of collusion between Philippine senators, district and party-list representatives, and construction companies. Former Philippine Supreme Court Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio, Jr. has called it “the biggest corruption scandal in Philippine history”.
Given the political history of the Philippines, there is of course a lot of irony in Marcos Jr.’s decrying the flood-control corruption in his 2025 SONA. On the other hand, at least the president decided to face the issue squarely and with candour. But it will take more than straight talk to fix the 118 billion peso (USD 1.95 billion) corruption that has come to light. With many of roads and bridges visibly tested with constant flood waters rising from the monsoon and from the average number of 20 typhoons that pass by the Philippines each year.
The Philippines is the Asia-Pacific country ranked first by the Asian Development Bank on climate vulnerability, and is ranked as the world’s most disaster-prone country according to the 2025 World Risk Index (WRI) published by Bündnis Entwicklung Hilft (BEH) and the Ruhr University Bochum–Institute for International Law of Peace and Armed Conflict (IFHV). For decades, Filipinos were all familiar with the sight of highly populated cities and towns submerged in knee-high or chest-level floods during the rainy season. Perennial flooding seemed to be an unsolvable problem, especially in cities where poor urban planning prevails.
What the last few months have also shown though was not only that harms from flooding are not only driven by the climate itself, but the systemic corruption that has especially afflicted flood-control projects amid the broader problem of weak implementation of policies in the Philippines.
A September 205 position paper from the Ateneo School of Government showed how the Philippines’ national budget has been diverted to flood-control projects, even at the cost of other items like education, health, agriculture, disaster preparedness, among other priorities. In the 2025 budget alone, the PHPH254.3 billion (A$4.3 billion) that went to flood control project is bigger than the budgets of other national line agencies: social welfare (PHP230.1 billion), health (PHP223.2 billion), agriculture (PHP129 billion). Subsequent revelations exposing the widespread corruption within the Department of Public Works and Highways led to President Marcos, Jr.’s decision to create an Independent Commission on Infrastructure (ICI) to investigate corruption within the sector.
The calls for accountability, especially in social media, snowballed leading to two multisectoral rallies held in major cities like Quezon City and Manila along with key cities and towns across the Philippines on 21 September. Various groups, including environmental ones, have positioned themselves and created alliances and coalitions and joined these mobilisations. Reminiscent of the #MillionPeopleMarch in August 2013 which saw a huge amount of Filipinos protesting against the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) pork-barrelling scandal among legislators, 2025’s nationwide #TrillionPesoMarch and #BahasaLuneta rallies reignited Filipinos’ desire for exacting accountability on this massive corruption scandal. A follow-up protest to the #TrillionPesoMarch is planned for 30 November.
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Last week, two major typhoons Falmaegi (local name: Tino) and Fung-wong (local name: Uwan) pummelled the central and northern Philippines, leaving hundreds dead and missing, and millions without homes and livelihoods despite billions of pesos worth of flood control and mitigation projects.
This happened as world leaders are about to meet in Belém, Brazil this week for the 30th annual UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of Parties (COP30). The 2015 Paris climate agreement is marking its 10th year but countries are failing to meet greenhouse gas emission targets. So far, only 64 parties have submitted new targets and the Philippines has yet to submit its revised National Determined Contributions (NDCs). Under the Paris treaty, NDCs provides a roadmap of a member state’s commitment to reduce emissions and adapt to impacts of climate change especially climate disasters which are becoming stronger in the last two decades in vulnerable countries like the Philippines.
Beyond hard infrastructure
At the surface level, the Philippine state’s fixation with flood control projects reveals the rotten system of corruption embedded in “hard” infrastructure projects that are known to be an easy source of large amounts of kickbacks. At a deeper level, the question is whether the Philippines really needs to spend a lot on flood control when we can also look at nature-based solutions and elements of the social safety net to ensure climate resilience and disaster preparedness.
A 2025 study of the Leyte Tide Embankment Project (LTE) examined the powerful allure of hard infrastructure like flood-control projects as mainstream technical fixes to mitigate climate hazards and adapt to impacts of climate change. The authors argued for community-based nature-based solutions for climate change adaptations. Take the case of People’s Survival Fund (PSF), which was put into law in 2012. Under this law, a PHP1 billion allocation is earmarked annually to the PSF under the national budget. The Department of Finance (DOF) heads the board which oversees the fund. Sample proposals which the PSF can fund are water resource management, land management, disease monitoring, and early warning systems, among others. While the PSF is geared towards long-term climate adaptation and resilience for communities, traditional flood control budgets are often associated with top-down, infrastructure-heavy projects.
Disaster preparedness and climate resilience go hand in hand. Even initiatives like PSF has been institutionalised via legislation, we also need to prepare for disasters. The Philippines has enacted the 2010 Philippines Disaster Management Act, which was able to shift the mindset from disaster response to disaster preparedness. Further, local government units are required to have disaster risk reduction and management offices (DRRMs) and earmark DRRM Funds from their Internal Revenue Allotments (IRA). Yet, funding remains a challenge at the local government level, especially for low-income municipalities.
When critical climate mitigation and adaptation funds are lost to corruption of flood-control infrastructure projects, it puts the lives of Filipinos and the future generations at risk. Taxpayers’ money should be spent on quality infrastructure and for nature-based climate adaptation projects. The Philippines government needs to step up in disaster preparedness through community-led programs and other social welfare programs on health, education and key sectors like agriculture, farming, and fisheries which are greatly impacted by the looming climate crisis. When trillions of public funds go to pockets of corrupt politicians and bureaucrats instead of funding these programs, it puts the lives and livelihoods of Filipinos in danger.
Ultimately the Philippine case also reflects the deep-seated problem of regulatory capture and entrenchment of rent-seeking oligarchs in the political system and democracy of countries in Southeast Asia which undermine climate resilience and disaster preparedness.
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