The Philippines is located at the meeting point of the major tectonic plates of Earth and a sizable portion of its area crosses the infamous “typhoon belt,” where about one-third of all tropical cyclones emerge worldwide.
Almost every month, there’s a typhoon that hits the country as about 20 typhoons enter the Philippines area each year, of which six to nine make landfall. Most of them lash the northern and central part of the country.
Typhoons rarely hit the Davao region, which is composed of Davao del Norte, Davao Oriental, Davao del Sur, Davao de Oro, and Davao Occidental. The region, after all, is situated outside the typhoon belt due to its close proximity to the equator.
But this doesn’t mean Davao region is free from typhoons. In 1970, super typhoon Titang (international name: Kate) hit the region, causing heavy damage and casualties. The typhoon brought powerful winds, torrential rainfall, and storm surge that ravaged nearly 5,000 homes and other structures.
In 2012, another super typhoon hit the region. Typhoon Pablo (Bopha) killed over a thousand people and devastated whole towns. The provinces of Davao Oriental and Davao de Oro were the most damaged, with landslides and flooding caused by the torrential rains.
Forewarned is forearmed, so goes a popular saying. If the region doesn’t want a repeat of what happened to the islands of Samar and Leyte when super typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan) hit Visayas. One of the country’s deadliest typhoons on record, it killed at least 6,3000 people.
One of those that helped some survivors living in the coastal areas was the mangrove forest. Dr. Moises Neil V. Seriño, Professor of the Department of Economics and currently the Vice President for Planning at the Visayas State University based in Leyte, found this out after he and co-researchers conducted a study on the aftermath of Super Typhoon Yolanda in 2013.
“Our study shows that mangrove vegetation reduced the number of deaths and damaged houses during the Yolanda incident,” Seriño told Edge Davao. “This property and lifesaving effects of mangrove is robust. Mangroves can protect us (our lives, livelihood and properties) from damaging effects of typhoons.”
Seriño and his team collected data from the areas where typhoon Yolanda passed through, particularly in Samar, Leyte, Bohol, Cebu, Negros, Panay, and Palawan.
“We focused on mangroves because mangroves have suffered degradation in the past decades and these mangrove ecosystems have been doing a very important job of protecting coastal communities from damaging effects of typhoons,” he explained.
After collecting data and analyzing them, they came up with a conclusion that mangroves indeed “provided significant protection to communities.”
He added, “Coastal communities with substantial mangrove cover suffered fewer or less casualty and less housing damages as compared to coastal communities with reduced mangrove cover.”
The team also reported that mangroves also suffered from typhoons “but they also generate and grow back naturally,” Dr. Seriño said. “If you have thick mangrove cover, the expected damage will be reduced by a factor of 2.4%.”
Dr. Seriño and his team conducted a similar study tracing the damages to coastal communities during the incidence of Super Typhoon Odette (Rai) in 2021 and their team found similar empirical evidence that an added hectarage of mangrove cover can reduce damages from strong typhoons. Mangroves acted as natural defense against damaging typhoons. Hence, conserving mangroves as a nature-based solution in protecting coastal communities from destruction typhoons is a justifiable policy strategy.
Mangroves are communities of trees in the tidal flats in coastal waters, extending inland along rivers where the water is tidal, saline, or brackish. “There are 25 to 30 species of true mangrove trees and an equal number of associated species,” said the late Dr. Miguel Fortes, who was then a professor at Marine Science Institute at the College of Science of University of the Philippines in Diliman when interviewed by the author.
The Biodiversity Management Bureau of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) has identified 42 species of mangroves in the country.
“Mangroves form one of the most important tropical habitats that support many species, and their loss can affect marine and terrestrial biodiversity much more widely,” pointed out Beth Polidoro, who led the first-ever global assessment on the conservation status of mangroves.
In Davao region, most of the mangroves are disappearing because they are not seen as important, although some coastal towns are starting to reforest the mangroves areas.
“Mangroves forests are under threat from both human and natural forces,” said a policy brief produced by the Washington, D.C.-based Population Reference Bureau (PRB) under the Research Technical Assistance Center. The briefer was based on Dr. Severino Salmo III’s research projects funded by the US’ National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and USAID through the Partnerships for the Enhancement of Engagement in Research (PEER) program.
All over the country, mangroves are cut wantonly for various reasons. “Mangrove forest cover in the Philippines has declined substantially during this century,” wrote Alan T. White and Roy Olsen D. de Leon, who once worked with the Coastal Resource Management Project and Silliman University Marine Laboratory, respectively.
“Construction projects and industrial uses such as airports, tourism, aquaculture, and housing have destroyed massive areas of mangrove forests,” the policy brief stated. “Sea level rise and severe typhoons can damage and destroy the mangrove areas that stand today.”
A global Landsat imaging done from 1990 to 2010 showed the estimated total area of mangrove coverage at 256,185 hectares in 2000. The result of the study, published in Journal of Coastal Research, found 66 out of 82 provinces have substantial mangroves.
Palawan, the country’s last frontier, topped the provinces with the most mangrove areas as a percentage of total national area with 22.2%. Most in the top list were from Mindanao: Sulu (8%), Zamboanga del Norte and del Sur (9.8%), Surigao del Norte and del Sur (6.8%), Tawi-Tawi (4.4%), and Basilan (2.97%).
Also in the top lists were Eastern and Western Samar (6.1%), Quezon (5.5%), and Bohol (3.69%). About 49,000 hectares, or 19% of the total national area, is under protection of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature for “long-term conservation purposes.” The protected mangroves are located in Palawan, Siargao, Malampaya Sound, Biri Larosa, El Nido, Tanon Strait, Northern Sierra Madre, Dumanquilas Bay, Sibuyan Islands, and Calauit Island.
“The loss of mangroves will have devastating economic and environmental consequences,” says Greg Stone, Senior Vice President of Marine Programs at Conservation International, another environmental group based in Washington, D.C. “These ecosystems are not only a vital component in efforts to fight climate change, but they also protect some of the world’s most vulnerable people from extreme weather and provide them with a source of food and income.”
Mangroves are very vital to marine life, says Dr. Rafael D. Guerrero III, an academician with the National Academy of Science and Technology. He considers mangroves as “fish factories.” More than 3,000 fish species are found in mangrove ecosystems.
“They serve as nursery grounds for fishes by providing their fry with food such as zooplankton,” Dr. Guerrero says. “They also serve as breeding or spawning grounds for fishes, shrimps, and mollusks.”
The muddy waters around mangroves are rich in nutrients from decaying leaves and organic matter produced by the mangroves themselves and also from the sediment that is trapped around the roots.
In addition, their root systems trap sediment and protect against shoreline erosion from wave action, helping to stabilize elevation as sea levels rise. More importantly, mangroves can reduce the impacts of damage caused by flooding.
The briefer said about 600,000 Filipinos are protected from flooding by mangroves each year. “Many of these people live in poverty,” it said.
Mangroves also offer services beyond coastal communities. They can sequester the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere by storing the greenhouse gas in their roots, trunks and leaves. “Mangroves can store four to five times as much carbon as upland forests,” the briefer said.
Some climatologists surmised that due to climate change, typhoons would become stronger and fiercer.
“With the threats of climate change in the Philippines particularly storm surges, tsunamis and strong typhoons,” says Dr. Elmer Mercado, a former DENR official, “mangrove is the most appropriate, least expensive climate change adaptation protection for our coastal-based communities.”
