Flood Control in the Philippines: When Corruption Bedevils Climate Change Mitigation

The fact that the Philippines is at the receiving end of countless typhoons every year is undeniable. But a miserable mix of corruption and the failure to execute and implement a slew of flood control projects has given the country the perfect storm.

In the span of just one week, the Philippines was pummelled by two devastating typhoons. Typhoon Tino (Kalmaegi) made landfall on 4 November 2025, leaving a trail of destruction across the Visayas Islands and Palawan, with at least 232 people dead. Five days later, the even stronger Typhoon Uwan (Fung-wong) made landfall in Luzon Island.

The Philippines is one of the countries most at risk from climate change. To compound matters, the reported proliferation of corruption-ridden and substandard flood control projects has amplified the impact of climate change risks. 

In his 2025 State of the Nation Address, President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. divulged large-scale corruption in the building of public works. He has launched months-long investigations into flood control projects and the deep collusion between lawmakers, public works officials, private sector contractors, and even budget officials.

However, the ballooning of pork barrel projects in so-called “unprogrammed funds” in recent years is not exactly new. Essentially, unprogrammed funds are stand-by allocations in the national budget which constitute an annexe to the national budget. Lawmakers have learned to use such funds to insert all manner of pork barrel projects, such as road networks, “multipurpose buildings”, and flood control projects. From 2023 to 2025, unprogrammed funds amounted to more than 2 trillion pesos. But other estimates suggest that from 2022 to 2024, pork barrel projects could be as large as 20 per cent of the national budget.

The investigations so far have revealed that many of these projects have been overdesigned, with project execution involving substandard and even inadequate materials. In many cases, authorities have even discovered “ghost” projects which are recorded as having been finished, yet are non-existent. These projects are found nationwide, but mostly in Luzon.

Most crucially, the plethora of flood control investigations (whether by media or Congress) have shown time and again that these poorly implemented projects can be directly blamed for the frequent or incessant flooding in many areas of the Philippines. The solution is not rocket science: the government should implement environmental and climate actions, complemented by efforts to root out widespread corruption in public works. On both fronts, however, there is much to be desired.

At the beginning of its six-year socioeconomic plan, called the Philippine Development Plan, the Marcos administration admitted the “modest” progress of the Philippine government when it comes to climate action.

To be sure, there is no shortage of climate programmes and policies, including the National Climate Change Action Plan, the Sustainable Finance Framework, the National Climate Risk Management Framework, and the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Plan.

But for a long time, the critical constraint was the lack of proper funding. To spur sustainable investments by the private sector, the government released in 2024 the Sustainable Finance Taxonomy Guidelines. These allow easier access to credit and potentially lower rates for businesses that want to make green investments. But take-up has been challenging since the guidelines require stringent compliance for borrowers and banks.

Public funds to combat climate change have increased of late. In 2025, climate-related expenditures reached a record 1 trillion pesos. But most of the spending goes to adaptation rather than mitigation. Under the Marcos administration, many relevant items and big-ticket projects (like key floodway projects and river channel improvements) have also been put in unprogrammed funds, which cannot be spent without additional funds from new taxes or foreign loans. 

Good governance must lie at the heart of any concerted effort to deal with worsening climate change.

In 2023, as much as 90 per cent of climate-related funds were poured into “water sufficiency” and “sustainable energy”, concentrated in large public works that include ill-conceived and hyperlocal flood control projects. This was confirmed by an analysis of the spending data, showing that other key priority areas — such as food security and ecological stability — were underfunded. In some instances, corruptible flood control projects were forced upon local governments that had not requested such projects.

It does not help that the government continues to green-light public-private partnerships that stand to worsen floods. San Miguel, a huge conglomerate, is building the sprawling New Manila International Airport in Bulacan. But the airport is located in a low-lying portion of Bulacan alongside Manila Bay, where communities contend with having to live in areas submerged in permanent floods. Experts fear that the new airport will worsen flooding in the area.

Alarmingly, the country has no master plan for flood control. As early as 2013, the administration of the late Benigno Aquino III completed a Flood Management Master Plan For Metro Manila with technical assistance from the World Bank. But the current Marcos administration says that such a plan was not endorsed to succeeding administrations, and therefore not implemented. This speaks to the deeper problems surrounding the continuity of programs and policies across administrations with a short lifespan of six years each.

From another perspective, environmental planners have challenged the entire concept of “flood control”. They argue that the government’s focus should be less on the haphazard building of flood control projects, but on the placement of comprehensive flood management programmes that involve nature-based solutions. This includes the protection of coastlines with appropriate mangrove species, reviving old river channels, and restoring wetlands. Communities that are constantly in the way of floods should also be relocated if needed. According to these planners, nature can only be “controlled” to a certain extent.     

As for climate change adaptation, the Philippines is banking on the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD), a global fund that aims to pool resources to help out countries most affected by severe climate events. Symbolically, in 2025, the Philippines hosted the board meeting of the FRLD. There is an irony here: the Philippines is urging richer countries to contribute to the fund, but the government is misusing its own climate funds.       

Good governance must lie at the heart of any concerted effort to deal with worsening climate change. Unless the Philippine government seriously mitigates corruption in public works, expect climate change to wreak even greater damage to Filipinos’ lives and livelihoods in the coming years.

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