BULACAN, Philippines : Each dawn on the tiny island of Pugad, 65-year-old street food vendor Maria Tamayo begins her day not by cooking, but by scooping seawater from her home with a plastic dustpan. It’s a three-hour ritual she performs before her grandchildren wake, hoping to keep them from slipping on the perpetually wet floor.
Pugad, a seven-hectare speck in Manila Bay, is home to about 2,500 residents and is slowly disappearing beneath the waves. High tides now flood its streets at least three times a week, dictating school schedules and forcing homes onto stilts. On heavy flooding days, murky water can rise to 1.5 meters, submerging shop floors and forcing goods onto high tables.
The island’s plight is part of a wider crisis in coastal Bulacan, where land is sinking at nearly 11 centimeters a year the fastest rate in the Philippines. Geologist Mahar Lagmay calls it an “alarming” case of land subsidence, driven by decades of groundwater over-extraction and worsened by climate change induced sea-level rise.
Sea levels in the Philippines are climbing three times faster than the global average of 3.6 millimeters annually, with government scientists warning the pace could accelerate to 13 millimeters a year. Without large-scale intervention, entire coastal communities could vanish.
Local leaders say returning to “normal” life is no longer possible. “The sea already controls our days,” said Pugad’s village captain, noting that residents have adapted as best they can, but the water keeps coming.
+ There are no comments
Add yours