The heartbreaking images coming out of Cebu following Typhoon Tino tug deeply at the national soul.

Just 45 days after a 7.2 earthquake rattled the island, another calamity struck—this time not from beneath the ground, but from above.

Torrential rains poured without mercy, rivers swelled beyond their banks, and neighborhoods that once buzzed with life turned into vast inland seas.

To the people of Cebu—our hearts go out to you.

No words can ease the pain of losing loved ones, homes, and livelihoods in a span of hours.

The sight of families clinging to rooftops, rescuers wading through chest-deep waters, and roads turning into rivers is a grim reminder of how fragile life can be when nature unleashes its fury.

Yet, it is also a reminder of how resilient Filipinos are—how Cebuanos, in particular, always rise from the rubble with courage and compassion.

An earthquake shakes buildings; a flood drowns hopes.

Together, they expose not only the force of nature but also the gaps in our stewardship of the land that sustains us

Cebu’s balding mountains, stripped of trees by decades of quarrying, informal settlements, and unchecked development, can no longer hold the rains.

Rivers, once shaded by bamboo and forest cover, are now clogged with silt, unable to channel excess water safely to the sea.

The result: a perfect storm of tragedy. Nature reclaims what we have taken for granted.

But there is another culprit that must be called out: the ghost flood control projects—those funded on paper but invisible in reality. Over the years, millions have been allocated for desilting, dredging, and drainage improvements that never materialized or were poorly executed. Retaining walls and drainage systems exist only in project documents, not on the ground where they were most needed. These phantom projects robbed Cebu of the very protection taxpayers thought they had already paid for.

In some barangays, residents point to canals and esteros supposedly “rehabilitated” yet remain choked with garbage and silt.

Floodways designed to ease overflow were either never finished or wrongly engineered, turning into cul-de-sacs for stormwater instead of escape routes.

The result? Corruption compounded calamity—a betrayal of public trust as lethal as the storm itself.

Accountability must not stop with the weather; it must reach those who profit from public neglect.

Healing the land by planting trees

Reconstruction must go hand in hand with restoration.

If we rebuild houses and roads but leave our mountains bare, we rebuild on borrowed time.

What Cebu—and the rest of the archipelago—needs is not only relief and reconstruction, but reforestation and regeneration.

We need to plant trees on our uplands, to anchor the soil, slow runoff, and recharge aquifers

We need to replant bambooS along riverbanks—our best natural engineers for erosion control and flood buffering.

We need to restore mangroves along the coastlines to soften the blow of storm surges and create natural nurseries for fish and livelihoods for fisherfolk.

These are not abstract environmental ideals; they are life-saving investments. Every seedling planted today could mean one less family displaced tomorrow.

The Million Trees Foundation stands with the people of Cebu—and we encourage our network of friends and partner stakeholders  to mobilize support for a Cebu Recovery and Reforestation Drive that will bring together government, private corporations, civil society, and local communities.

The formula is simple: many small acts, sustained over time, can heal a wounded landscape.

As the Danish proverb I often quote reminds us, “Mange bække små gør en stor å”—many little streams make a great river.

Let us turn grief into growth. Let us re-green the very mountains that now bleed with mud. Let us make bamboo the banner of resilience, and tree-planting the new ritual of hope.

While Typhoon Tino and the earthquake that preceded it are cruel teachers, however, their message is clear: we cannot be passive spectators to the disasters we help create.

Climate change is real, but so is deforestation. Both can be mitigated—if we act now, together, and with urgency.

To my fellow advocates, to business leaders, to government officials, and to every Filipino who has watched these heartbreaking images—let Cebu’s tragedy move us not only to tears, but to trees.

In the end, Cebu’s ordeal is more than a natural disaster; it is a man-made tragedy born of neglect and misplaced priorities.

Ghost flood-control projects litter our records while our mountains stand bald and our rivers choke on silt. We have turned a blind eye to nature’s warning signs, ignoring the very solutions that could have spared us such misery.

The abolition of Project NOAH in 2017 by the Duterte administration continues to haunt us and kill Filipinos.

Once a beacon of science and foresight in disaster preparedness, its abrupt ending  marked a painful retreat from evidence-based governance.

Had it been nurtured, perhaps early warnings and better planning could have saved lives and communities. It is time to bring back the spirit of NOAH — not merely as a government project, but as a collective national conscience that values foresight, accountability, and harmony with nature.

Let us rebuild our defenses not with ribbon-cuttings or press releases, but with trees, bamboos, and a renewed respect for the environment that sustains us all.

(The writer, president/chief executive officer of Media Touchstone Ventures, Inc. and president/executive director of the Million Trees Foundation Inc., a non-government outfit advocating tree-planting and environmental protection, is the official biographer of President Fidel V. Ramos.)