N Insights
By Doc Ian Mark Q. Nacaya
Perspectives on Leadership and Community Life
When flooding, riverbank erosion, landslides and other climate-related hazards threaten our communities, government’s conventional response is often infrastructure: drainage systems, dikes, floodwalls, slope protection and other engineering interventions.
These measures remain important. But an equally important question must be asked: What if nature itself is treated as part of our infrastructure?
This is the central idea behind Ecosystem-based Adaptation (EbA) and the broader concept of Nature-based Solutions (NbS) – using healthy ecosystems and their natural functions to help communities adapt to climate change and reduce disaster risks.
This perspective also relates directly to a study I recently presented at the 6th European Ecosystem Services Partnership (ESP) Conference in Prague, Czech Republic, where I discussed Ecosystem-based Adaptation as an approach to infrastructure adaptation. The study reinforces an important policy proposition: infrastructure resilience should not be confined to strengthening concrete structures. It should also include protecting and restoring the ecosystems upon which the resilience of those structures and the communities they serve ultimately depends.
EbA as Infrastructure Adaptation
Infrastructure adaptation is often understood in engineering terms: elevate a road, strengthen a bridge, enlarge drainage, reinforce a riverbank or construct another flood-control facility.
EbA expands this perspective.
A watershed that absorbs and regulates rainfall performs an infrastructure function. A forest that stabilizes slopes and reduces soil erosion provides protective infrastructure. Riparian vegetation that protects riverbanks performs a similar function. Wetlands and floodplains that temporarily retain excess water contribute to flood regulation. Mangroves that reduce wave energy and coastal erosion function as natural coastal defenses.
These are not substitutes for every engineered structure. Rather, they constitute natural infrastructure that can complement conventional or “gray” infrastructure.
My Prague presentation emphasized this important relationship between ecosystem services, climate adaptation and infrastructure resilience. Infrastructure should not be viewed independently from the ecological systems surrounding it. Roads, bridges, drainage networks, settlements and other public assets exist within watersheds, landscapes and river systems.
When those ecological systems deteriorate, infrastructure becomes increasingly exposed.
Flooding Begins Beyond the Flooded Area
Consider urban flooding. We usually see the problem where the water accumulates – streets, subdivisions, commercial areas and low-lying communities. Consequently, interventions tend to concentrate in those same locations. But the causes may originate much farther upstream. Deforestation, land conversion, soil degradation and loss of vegetation can reduce the landscape’s capacity to intercept rainfall and retain water. Increased runoff carries water, sediment and debris downstream. Sedimentation can reduce the capacity of rivers and drainage channels.
The flooded community may therefore represent only the endpoint of a much larger ecological process. This is why flood management cannot begin and end with drainage. An EbA approach requires us to look at the entire ridge-to-reef system. Upstream, watershed protection, assisted natural regeneration, reforestation, agroforestry and soil-and-water conservation can help improve water regulation and reduce erosion.
Along rivers and creeks, riparian rehabilitation and appropriate river-corridor protection can stabilize banks and maintain ecological functions. In agricultural areas, contour farming, vegetative strips and agroforestry can reduce soil erosion while protecting farm productivity. Downstream, wetlands, estuaries, mangroves and coastal ecosystems can provide additional buffers while supporting fisheries and biodiversity.
Thus, protecting an ecosystem can generate several development outcomes simultaneously: flood mitigation, erosion control, water security, agricultural productivity, biodiversity conservation, livelihood protection and climate resilience.
Green, Blue and Gray Must Work Together
EbA does not mean abandoning concrete infrastructure. Highly urbanized communities still require properly designed drainage systems, bridges, flood-control facilities and other engineered interventions. The policy direction should therefore not be nature versus engineering. It should be nature plus engineering.
We need hybrid infrastructure systems combining green infrastructure, such as forests and vegetation, blue infrastructure, such as rivers, wetlands and water-retention systems, and gray infrastructure, such as drainage, roads, bridges and flood-control structures.
Imagine flood management beginning in the watershed rather than at the flooded street. Upstream forests and farms help retain water and control erosion. River corridors accommodate and regulate water movement. Retention areas temporarily store excess runoff. Urban drainage moves remaining water efficiently. Appropriately located engineered structures protect vulnerable communities. These interventions become parts of one resilience system rather than separate government projects.
The Missing Link Is Governance
This brings us to perhaps the most difficult issue. Nature does not recognize administrative boundaries.
A river may pass through several municipalities and cities. Water entering one LGU may originate from the watershed of another. Sediment accumulating downstream may have resulted from land-use activities many kilometers upstream. Government, however, is organized according to territorial jurisdictions and sectoral mandates.
One institution handles forests. Another handles agriculture. Another constructs infrastructure. LGUs regulate land use. Other agencies oversee water resources, disaster risk reduction, fisheries and environmental protection. Individually, each institution may be performing its mandate. Collectively, however, fragmented interventions may fail to address an interconnected ecological problem.
EbA, therefore, requires not only ecosystem integration but institutional integration. National agencies, LGUs, communities, private institutions, civil society and universities must begin planning around the ecological system and river basin, rather than exclusively around individual administrative mandates.
This calls for a Whole-of-Society approach – the government, supported by the private sector, academe and communities.
Investing Before Disaster Happens! Another lesson arising from the EbA perspective is the need to shift public expenditure increasingly toward prevention. Government necessarily spends heavily after disasters – evacuation, relief, repair, rehabilitation and reconstruction. But resilience requires us to ask what investments could have reduced the damage beforehand.
Restoring watersheds, protecting river easements, rehabilitating riparian areas, conserving soil, restoring mangroves and protecting natural water-retention areas may sometimes appear less impressive than large concrete structures. Yet their accumulated ecological services can protect communities and public infrastructure for years. This is precisely why ecosystem services should increasingly enter our public investment and infrastructure planning frameworks.
Government should also measure outcomes rather than activities. The question should not simply be: How many trees did we plant?
We should ask: Did runoff decrease? Did erosion decline? Did vegetation cover improve? Did riverbanks stabilize? Did water-retention capacity increase? Did communities and infrastructure become less vulnerable to flooding?
That is results-based environmental governance.
Nature Is Infrastructure! Perhaps the most important message from the study I presented in Prague is a change in the way we think about infrastructure itself. A forest is not simply a collection of trees. A watershed is not merely undeveloped land. A wetland is not wasted space. A mangrove forest is not an obstruction to coastal development. A healthy river corridor is not vacant land waiting to be occupied. These ecosystems are natural infrastructure.
They store water, regulate runoff, stabilize soil, protect shorelines, support biodiversity, sustain agriculture and fisheries, and reduce the exposure of communities and physical infrastructure to climate hazards.
Recognizing EbA as infrastructure adaptation therefore creates an important opportunity for national government and LGUs. Our CDPs, CLUPs, Local Climate Change Action Plans, Local DRRM Plans, LDIPs and Annual Investment Programs should increasingly identify ecosystems not simply as environmental resources to be protected, but as strategic resilience assets worthy of sustained public investment.
The future of flood management cannot simply be about constructing higher walls against nature. It must also be about restoring nature’s capacity to protect us. Protect the ridge. Restore the watershed. Manage the river. Rehabilitate the coast. Build appropriate infrastructure. And govern all of them as one interconnected system.
That is the promise of Ecosystem-based Adaptation.
And that may be one of the most important shifts we can make, from merely building infrastructure against climate hazards to building resilience with nature itself as part of our infrastructure.
About the Author
Dr. Ian Mark Q. Nacaya, DPA, is a Public Systems Analyst and Policy Strategist, former six-term City Councilor and 3X Majority Floor Leader of Cagayan de Oro City, and an advocate of disaster resilience, environmental governance and sustainable local development. His research on Ecosystem-based Adaptation and infrastructure adaptation was recently presented at the 6th European Ecosystem Services Partnership Conference in Prague, Czech Republic. He is the Founder of NACAYA Public-SectoralDev Insights Consulting and he also serves as a graduate school professor in public administration courses.
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