No Quick Solutions! El Niño Preparation Must Begin With Reforestation, Water Mgt.

Yesterday, a local radio station interviewed me to ask whether government is prepared for the El Niño, a long dry spell expected to set in by September this year affecting agricultural productivity, and my answer was an emphatic and big “No.”
We are not and we had never been prepared for the El Niño, a natural climatic phenomenon characterized by the warming of the water in the Pacific Ocean, resulting in long dry spells which prevent farmers from planting crops.
The Department of Agriculture recently announced that it was preparing for the El Niño by programming cloud seeding, which had been proven to be ineffective and waste of money, and assistance to farmers, along with plans to build more irrigation systems.
We often hear of these assurances when reports of an impending El Niño are made by PAGASA but more often than not these are forgotten when the drought ends.
The last major El Niño to hit the country was in 2016 which was made more tragic by the death of several farmers demanding food from government who were shot and killed in a rally in Kidapawan City.
There is no way we could prevent the occurrence of El Niño but we could mitigate its effects by instituting long-term and sustainable programs related to the protection of the environment and the management of water resources.
1. The Philippines has to seriously review its reforestation and re-greening program because if our mountains are bald, the creeks will dry up during the El Niño and there will be less water even in living streams and rivers.
Planting Bamboos as the foundation vegetation in the denuded mountains could be a good start to be followed by the planting of endemic trees in the critical watersheds.
2. Government must launch a unified effort on water management and conservation by gathering all agencies with functions related to water and creating a National Water Authority to initiate a nation-wide program to build water catchments, mini-dams, reservoirs, Sabo dams and the like to hold run-off water and prevent soil erosion.
There must be a national awareness on this advocacy and make people understand that if Israel, which has very low rainfall and only a few rivers, could assure its people of sufficient water supply, the Philippines could do better because we have over 1,000 rivers, creeks and lakes, heavy rainfall for several months every year and typhoons which inundate our low-lying communities.
3. El Niño means rainless and hot days and what better way to neutralize its devastating effect than by using the same heat to power Solar Irrigation Systems to provide water to our farmlands?
This is a very basic application of the Kung Fu philosophy of using the enemy’s power to over-power him because the hotter the days are, the more efficient would the Solar Irrigation Systems be.
4. We have to change the post-disaster intervention mindset or the rehabilitation and “ayuda” thinking in addressing calamities.
Indeed, we cannot stop the typhoons or the El Niño and La Niña as we cannot tame Mother Nature but with plain and simple pre-disaster preparedness and common sense, we could actually cushion the impact of calamities on the lives of our people.
Remember, there are no instant solutions or quick fixes to the problems caused by nature.
All that is needed is a long-term and visionary strategy to prepare for all the unforeseen events which could affect our people.
This brings us back to the Biblical story of Noah and the Ark.
#GovernanceIsCommonSense!
#KungGustoMaramingParaan!