Wetlands as the Philippines’ quiet climate shield

As the world marks World Wetlands Day today, the Philippines confronts a reality that is neither abstract nor symbolic. In a country repeatedly tested by storms, floods, and rising seas, wetlands are not peripheral landscapes. They are part of the country’s essential risk-management fabric, shaping how communities endure climate stress long before disasters arrive.

Wetlands do matter. Assessments under the Ramsar Convention and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change show that wetlands regulate water and store carbon in ways no engineered system can fully replicate. They temper floods, blunt storm surges, and lock away carbon accumulated over centuries. When intact, they quietly reduce climate risk. When degraded, that risk is transferred often directly into towns, infrastructure, and public budgets.

For the Philippines, this global reality takes on a distinctly national form. As an archipelago, we are shaped by water. Mangroves line our coasts, wetlands sit at river mouths and floodplains, and inland marshes and lakes regulate rainfall and runoff. These ecosystems form a first line of defense where climate hazards concentrate. They are where storm surges lose height, where floodwaters spread instead of destroy, and where risk is softened before it becomes catastrophe.

That natural shield, however, is thinning. Worldwide, more than a third of wetlands have disappeared since 1970, declining faster than forests. In the Philippines, land conversion, reclamation, pollution, and poorly planned development continue to erode wetlands even as climate impacts intensify. The result is not simply environmental loss. It is heightened exposure — more flooding, greater storm damage, higher recovery costs, and deeper disruptions to food systems and local economies.

The country’s commitments under the Ramsar Convention reflect an understanding of what is at stake. Today, the Philippines counts ten Wetlands of International Importance, including Agusan Marsh, Olango Island, the Las Piñas–Parañaque Wetland Park, and the Del Carmen Mangrove Reserve in Siargao. These sites are not symbolic designations. They show that wetland protection already sits within our development pathway, and must be treated with the urgency and scale it requires.

The climate value of mangroves is firmly established. After major typhoons “Yolanda” (Haiyan) and “Odette” (Rai), experience has shown that intact mangrove belts reduce wave energy, lower storm surges, and lessen damage to lives and property. Mangroves do not eliminate risk — but they decisively lower it, protecting buhay, kabuhayan, at kinabukasan — lives, livelihoods, and our shared future.

Equally important, mangrove protection and restoration are significantly less costly than relying solely on built defenses such as seawalls. They reduce the scale of infrastructure required while delivering benefits engineered systems cannot: fisheries productivity, food security, carbon storage and biodiversity. This is not an argument against gray infrastructure, but a reminder that nature-based solutions often make development more efficient, resilient, and fiscally sound.

The same logic applies inland. Lakes, marshes and freshwater wetlands are often treated as secondary to coastal systems, yet they are equally critical to climate resilience. These inland wetlands regulate water across entire watersheds — buffering floods, sustaining food production, and securing water supply during dry periods. Places like Lake Sebu, South Cotabato, along with marshes and floodplain lakes across the country, are not only ecological assets but cultural and economic anchors for surrounding communities. Yet they are increasingly under pressure from unplanned development, pollution, watershed degradation and resource extraction. When lakes are overbuilt or marshes are drained, the consequences travel downstream — amplifying flood risk, degrading water quality and eroding livelihoods. Treating inland wetlands as expendable landscapes is a quiet but costly mistake in a warming climate.

Seen together, coastal and inland wetlands function as one connected system. What is lost upstream magnifies risk downstream; what fails inland weakens protection along the coast. Addressing these risks site by site is no longer sufficient. Managing wetlands at this scale is ultimately a question of national coordination and governance.

These realities are now reflected in national policy. The Philippines’ National Adaptation Plan (NAP) — the country’s first comprehensive adaptation framework developed under the leadership and administration of President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. — was driven through a whole-of-government process led by the Climate Change Commission and submitted to the UNFCCC. The NAP recognizes wetlands as central to adaptation, particularly for disaster risk reduction, water regulation and community resilience. It reframes ecosystems not as ancillary environmental concerns, but as core assets for managing climate risk.

This shift matters because adaptation is ultimately about prevention. By embedding wetlands into climate planning, the NAP moves the country from reacting to disasters toward reducing their impact before they strike — lowering human suffering and long-term fiscal costs. It anchors decisions in data, climate projections, and risk assessments, ensuring that resilience investments are guided by evidence rather than impulse.

This is not theory. Over time, the work on wetlands has unfolded through common ground and shared responsibility. In Pandan, Antique, I joined Senator Loren Legarda during her visit to a community-run mangrove forest and nursery — one of many moments where policy intent meets lived reality. Along the coast, from Del Carmen in Siargao to the mangrove edges of Manila Bay, to mangrove parks in Leganes, Iloilo and in the Hundred Islands in Alaminos, Pangasinan, and in private-sector–supported sites such as the Aboitiz Foundation’s mangrove and marine turtle sanctuary in Punta Dumalag, Davao, those encounters make clear why mangroves matter: they absorb force, hold the line and buy communities time.

Inland, the same logic applies. In Lake Sebu and Lake Lanao, repeated engagement shows how lake systems quietly sustain food, culture and water security, while remaining vulnerable to decisions made far upstream. Around Laguna Lake, long-standing and open conversations with Mayor Lani Cayetano of Taguig and Mayor Ronald Cosico of Paete have focused consistently on the need to sustain efforts addressing the stresses and strains of surging development, flooding hazards, water quality and fragmented authority. As Senator Legarda has often reminded us, resilience is not built by overpowering nature, but by respecting the systems that protect lives and livelihoods long before disasters arrive.

This year’s World Wetlands Day theme —“Wetlands and Traditional Knowledge” — underscores a vital relationship that runs both ways. Across generations, Filipino communities have translated lived knowledge into practice: where to build, when to fish, how to leave space for water. These practices reinforce the value of wetlands and keep alive this memory of respect and stewardship that modern policy often struggles to sustain. In conversations in coastal villages and wetland communities, including with Indigenous Peoples, I have humbly heard the same lesson expressed plainly — that wetlands are not obstacles to progress, but conditions for survival. In return, wetlands protect the communities that have long depended on them by safeguarding livelihoods, anchoring culture and preserving ways of life that form part of the Filipino soul. When science, data, and traditional knowledge converge, stewardship becomes not only effective, but enduring.

The task now is to treat wetlands with the seriousness we reserve for other forms of national infrastructure. Roads, bridges and digital networks receive sustained investment because we recognize their role in economic continuity and public safety. Wetlands deserve the same recognition. Mainstreaming blue carbon and nature-based solutions into climate planning and budgeting is not a choice between development and protection. It is a choice for development and prosperity that last.

In a warming world, resilience is built long before disaster strikes. Wetlands do that work quietly — absorbing, slowing, and buffering risk day after day. Keeping this natural shield in place is one of the most practical, disciplined, and forward forward-looking decisions the Philippines has made. This is a decision we must continue to strengthen and broaden in its implementation nationwide.