Stop calling Filipinos resilient
As of Aug. 31, the Office of Civil Defense reported that more than 8.1 million people were affected nationally, with Central Luzon the hardest-hit region and 258 flooded areas in Pampanga alone. The Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical, and Astronomical Services Administration continues to warn of enhanced “habagat” and heavy rains over Pampanga and Metro Manila.
We hear it after every typhoon, every earthquake, every flood. We hear it when families wade through waist-deep water, when small businesses reopen after losing their stocks, when students return to school after evacuation, and when communities rebuild homes that may, again, be destroyed next year.
We say it as praise. Perhaps we should stop. Not because Filipinos are not resilient. We have become extraordinarily good at coping with adversity. But a society that repeatedly asks its people to survive the same disaster has a governance problem, not a resilience problem.
The floodwaters will eventually recede. The roads will reopen. Schools will resume. Government offices will issue situation reports. Politicians will visit affected communities. Relief goods will arrive. Pumps will operate. Broken dikes will be repaired. And then we will move on until the next flood.
We need a different definition of resilience. The highest form of resilience is not the ability to survive the next flood. It is the ability to change the conditions that make the next flood so destructive. That requires a shift from reaction to anticipation, from projects to systems, and from isolated jurisdictions to coordinated action.
Consider Marikina. It was once notorious for devastating floods. Yet sustained political leadership, river management, infrastructure investment, land-use discipline, disaster preparedness, and institutional learning gradually changed the city’s relationship with the Marikina River. The lesson is not simply that Marikina built better flood control infrastructure. The deeper lesson is governance continuity. Good decisions accumulate over time. That matters because rivers do not operate on three-year electoral cycles. Neither do watersheds, drainage systems, settlements, or climate change.
Which brings us to a larger question: What happens when the problem itself is bigger than the municipality? In the Lower Pampanga Delta, five municipalities—Macabebe, Masantol, Sasmuan, Lubao, and Guagua—share an interconnected socio-ecological landscape. Water, sediment, flooding, agriculture, fisheries, settlements, roads, livelihoods, and ecosystems do not stop at municipal boundaries. Yet our institutions do. Each municipality prepares its own Comprehensive Land Use Plan (CLUP). Each has its own development priorities, investments, regulations, and political leadership.
There is nothing wrong with municipal planning. It is indispensable. But a shared delta requires something more. This is why the Mt. Pinatubo Region Resilience Escalator Strategy, or MPRRES, is exploring an intermunicipal CLUP for these five municipalities. The idea is deceptively simple: bring the municipalities together to understand their shared system, examine alternative futures, identify risks and opportunities across boundaries, and jointly determine what should happen where.
This is not about taking planning away from mayors. It is about giving mayors better information and a larger map on which to make decisions. Imagine CLUPs informed not merely by demographic projections and land inventories, but by flood models, geographic information systems, community knowledge, climate scenarios, ecosystem assessments, infrastructure vulnerability, livelihood analysis, and alternative futures.
Imagine five municipalities asking together: Where should we build? Where should we not build? Where should water go? Which ecosystems must be protected? Which infrastructure must be connected? Where should evacuation facilities be located? Which roads must remain passable? Which investments should be shared? And what happens if the climate becomes substantially wetter? That is planning as anticipation rather than compliance.
But the plan itself is not enough. The real action pathway is: science → shared knowledge → co-design → intermunicipal decisions → investment → implementation → monitoring → learning → adaptation.
Universities can supply research and students. Scientists can provide models and evidence. Government agencies can contribute technical resources. Communities can supply knowledge that no satellite can see. Municipal governments can turn knowledge into policies, budgets, and regulations. And citizens can hold the whole system accountable.
This is where we must stop using resilience as a compliment for suffering. We should demand resilient institutions, not merely resilient victims. We should celebrate mayors and communities that anticipate disasters, planners who refuse unsafe development, engineers who design for future conditions, scientists who make complex knowledge usable, and citizens who insist that public investments actually reduce risk.
The Philippines does not lack plans. It lacks enough planning that learns, coordinates, and acts ahead of the hazard. Let us stop calling people resilient when what they deserve is a government capable of making them safer.
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doyromero@gmail.com
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