UP Fight: Taking on the raging floodwaters

UP Fight, that heartfelt and reverberating battle cry of the University of the Philippines during UAAP season, has taken on another meaning in this time of alarming flooding.

The country’s premier university is stepping up the fight against the worsening and deadly flood-related disasters affecting us now more than ever, especially during this month-long monsoon season.

Last week at the UP Executive House, UP president Angelo “Jijil” Jimenez announced a P1-billion addition to the war chest of UP Resilience Institute-NOAH Center (UPRI), to be used for a science-based system for flood management and disaster risk reduction.

Listening to UPRI executive director Mahar Lagmay explain where the funding will go gave me hope.

The new P1-billion budget for Project NOAH (Nationwide Operational Assessment of Hazards) will help fund efforts to uncover more undocumented waterways in the country, with the goal of preventing flooding during severe weather events.

Identifying these waterways – some already buried, altered or diverted – would help guide local governments in proper urban planning and drainage development.

Restoring these channels can prevent localized flooding during heavy rains, Lagmay said.

“We use science to understand that not all places get flooded – it’s beside the creeks, it’s in the low-lying areas, it’s beside the streams that are normally dry, but they get flooded during the rainy season,” he added.

Lagmay said checking and restoring these critical channels are essential to maintaining proper surface runoff and preventing localized flooding during heavy rains.

Aside from locating undocumented waterways, the P1-billion funding will help generate high-resolution maps of major river basins in the country, support Oplan Kontra Baha and identify nature-based solutions to prevent disasters.

During the briefing, Lagmay also discussed proposals to actually help manage floods. One proposal is to put in place major detention basins. There are already 10 proposed locations for detention basins, and the search for other possible sites continues.

Basketball courts, he said, can be built in a way that allows them to serve as detention basins. As Lagmay said in jest, hindi lang pang baha, pang i-sports pa.

UPRI will also support the promotion of nature-based solutions in managing floods. These include green infrastructure, constructed wetlands, natural flood management and bioswales, gently sloped landscape channels designed to absorb and slow down stormwater runoff.

Imagine what P1 billion can do!

Listening to Lagmay, I can’t help but think of how much money was lost in the unprecedented flood-control corruption mess – potentially up to a P1 trillion.

Now, imagine what P1 trillion could have done! Imagine how much better our response would have been to these climate-related disasters if the money, or even just a quarter of it, had been put to good use.

Serving the nation

And yet, we don’t just need funding. We also need brains in government so that response to flooding is science-based, as UPRI is doing.

In his speech, president Jijil described the P1-billion allocation recently released by the Department of Budget and Management for the UPRI as an investment in something that UP has always believed in: the power of research and innovation to serve the nation.

“At UP, we do not conduct research simply to add another paper to an academic journal, or another dataset to a repository, or another technology to a laboratory,” he said.

“We do research because knowledge matters. And knowledge matters most when it can help us make better decisions, solve real problems and improve the lives of our people.”

The reality, president Jijil said, is that we cannot stop the rain from falling. “But we can make better decisions before the rain comes.”

“We can know where the water is likely to go. We can identify which communities and infrastructure are most exposed. We can understand how a proposed intervention will perform before billions of pesos are spent building it. And, importantly, we can give government and communities the information they need to act – not after disaster strikes, but before,” he said.

The goal, he puts it rather simply: “The end is a safer Filipino community.”

And this, for sure, is a fight worth fighting for.

Happy Independence Day, Ukraine!

Speaking of fighting the good fight, Ukraine recently marked one of its most important holidays, its 35th Independence Day on Aug. 24.

On this day in 1991, the Verkhovna Rada, the unicameral parliament of Ukraine, adopted the Act of Independence, which became a turning point in the modern history of the state.

The day has symbolized the freedom and unwavering spirit of the Ukrainian people.

The embassy of Ukraine in the Philippines, in celebration of Ukraine’s Independence Day and Philippine National Heroes Day, organized last week the “Legacy and Leadership: Reimagining Heroism in the Modern World” event.

I join Ukraine in celebrating its Independence Day.

The words of Ukraine Ambassador Yuliia Fediv during the event are inspiring as she captures the strength of her nation that was thrust into a full-scale war – air raids, shelling, killings and all.

“Freedom survives only when people are prepared to take responsibility for it. Heroism is not the absence of fear. It is the decision that something greater than our fear – freedom, dignity and our country – must be protected,” she said.

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