Here’s an often-neglected scandalous angle to the country’s devastating corruption crisis: science was ominously sidelined in this disaster-prone country so that the corrupt could freely steal billions.
This became increasingly clear last week after the Cebu provincial government sought to revive Project Noah (Nationwide Operational Assessment of Hazards) following the ravages wrought by the recent earthquake and typhoon “Tino.”
The Cebu government could do no less. In fact, after the recent earthquake, most of the collapsed structures were in places called out on NOAH’s hazard maps.
Cebu Assistant Provincial Administrator Aldwin Empaces said a recent review of quarry operations in the province used scientific data and hazard assessments of Project NOAH reports.
In place during the tenure of former governor Hilario Davide III, the Noynoy Aquino-initiated Project NOAH was shelved by former Cebu officials following its defunding by the Duterte regime.
After its defunding, the University of the Philippines Resilience Institute adopted Project NOAH and kept it going without state financial support, leaving its scientists to their own devices. Geologist Mahar Lagmay is the institute’s current director.
The Duterte regime, in short, largely scuttled Project NOAH. But the Marcos administration has since found NOAH valuable. House Speaker Faustino Dy, for instance, recently met with NOAH’s administrators on how Congress could support and institutionalize it.
And, following grave flooding threats from recent typhoons, Project NOAH’s accurate yet unfinished hazard maps provided administration officials and the public with free crucial information.
As one news report put it: “Project Noah was not just a website with pretty maps. It was a working shield: sensors on rivers, LiDAR-based flood models, barangay-level hazard maps and six-hour lead time for communities to act. It gave teachers something better than ‘bahala na’ and mayors something stronger than gut feel.”
Still, it was Duterte’s enigmatic “quiet” 2017 defunding of NOAH that is now raising suspicions that the move spawned the subsequent massive flood control thievery.
Sinister suspicions like those raised by science writer Ulysis Dylan Gruta, who recently claimed in a viral Facebook post that “while the nation’s top disaster-warning system was killed, flood control projects multiplied.”
Recent investigations have unmasked some of those who allegedly benefited from these massive flood control projects since then.
Gruta further claimed “Project NOAH was bad for business — the dirty kind.” Why?
“Because,” claimed Gruta, “NOAH’s maps made corruption harder. If anyone could check online which areas truly needed flood control projects, then every ‘drainage improvement’ or ‘river walk’ pork barrel would have had to make sense.”
Furthermore, without NOAH “you could build a dike in the desert and call it ‘resilience.’ You could pour concrete into a river that doesn’t flood and still get a ribbon-cutting. Defunding NOAH wasn’t about saving money. It was about saving face — and saving schemes,” Gruta said.
In short, “Project NOAH didn’t fail. It embarrassed the system. It showed where funds should go — and where they shouldn’t. That’s why it had to die.”
Whether Gruta’s claim is merely coincidental or plausibly acceptable, this administration nevertheless needs to quickly institutionalize Project NOAH and fund its capable scientists, who shouldn’t even be lobbying for their continued existence.
Beyond fixing the flood control corruption mess, this administration must be serious about leaving a lasting legacy of mitigating disasters through science-based “foresight” and measures.
Political narrow-mindedness won’t cut it anymore. By failing to prepare, one prepares to fail.