Raphael Bosano
Amid record-breaking temperatures in April and May, residents in the Philippines, particularly those living in the bustling capital region, are baked under record heat in April and May, exacerbated by a powerful El Niño and lack of green spaces.
The shade and comfort provided by trees have often been undervalued and overshadowed by the relentless drive for progress, development and infrastructure. But the sweltering heat has highlighted the pressing need for urban greenery and its importance in providing relief and enhancing the quality of life in densely populated communities.
As sunlight creeps into every corner, workers, commuters, students and the homeless alike scramble for refuge. Desperately seeking shade, they often find themselves huddled under metal sheds or against buildings – structures which ironically amplify the heat rather than provide much needed relief.
Data from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) show that the country has seen a slight increase in open forests in recent years. Despite this uptick, many Filipinos have yet to experience any noticeable benefits.
Months of data gathering, analysis and interviews provide a comprehensive look at the current state of tree cover in the National Capital Region with a particular focus on its largest city and what it would take to make Manila greener.
Here's what findings reveal.
1. Metro Manila is struggling to increase its open forests and mangrove trees
For a country whose topography is a vibrant mix of mountains, forests and coastlines, the Philippines saw a decline in open forests from the early 2000s until about 2015.
The DENR defines open forests as “formations with discontinuous tree layers with a coverage of at least 10 percent and less than 40%.”
From 2009 to 2019, the Philippine Forestry Statistics (PFS) only used forest data from three years – 2003, 2010 and 2015. Open forests in Metro Manila have shown a significant decline from 2,790 to 2,000 hectares. It was only during 2020 when the number slightly rose to 2,071 – less than 10 percent of all that was lost from the earlier part of the millennium. This figure makes up only a little over three percent of the entire land area of Metro Manila.
Meanwhile, mangroves forests, according to PFS data, spanned only 30 hectares in 2009 but have grown more than four times that since 2012. By 2020, figures saw a slight increase to 135 hectares. Mangroves are typically grown along the coast or waterways – something that is either limited or concentrated only in certain pockets of the region.
The alarming loss of trees nationwide prompted the government to embark on an ambitious reforestation effort through the National Greening Program (NGP). Signed during the administration of the late president Benigno Aquino III in 2011, the NGP aimed to plant 1.5 billion trees in 1.5 million hectares of land in six years. The program was later expanded and called the Enhanced NGP which aimed to “rehabilitate all the remaining unproductive, denuded and degraded forestlands estimated at 7.1 million hectares from 2016 to 2028.”
However, based on a 2016 accomplishment report of the National Greening Program, Metro Manila only planted a little over 190,000 seedlings over 372 hectares of land. In succeeding reports, the region was no longer mentioned.
Lush forests not only serve as habitats for wildlife and improve biodiversity, but are essential to people as well. Communities with high concentrations of trees experience better protection from the impacts of extreme weather and severe heat and are blessed overall with better air quality.
2. Metro Manila fails to provide enough urban green space per resident
The World Health Organization has recommended the availability of nine square meters of urban green space per capita within 15 minutes walking distance.
Out of Metro Manila’s 16 cities and one municipality, only Muntinlupa and Quezon City meet that standard of green space per capita, based on data from the Urban Environment and Social Inclusion Index. Data in terms of accessibility to these green spaces, however, remains lacking. An inefficient public transport system and less walkable streets as evidenced by everyday traffic and commuting woes from the general public may give an idea of just how accessible public places are in general.
Muntinlupa, according to its website, envisions its people to be “living peacefully and securely in a climate change-adaptive and disaster-resilient community.” The city boasts an impressive 14.4 square meters of tree cover per capita, securing its position as the leader among Metro Manila cities in this often overlooked but important metric.
Quezon City claims the second highest tree cover per capita at 12.5 square meters. But the question is, do residents, especially the vulnerable population in densely populated barangays, have easy access to much needed tree cover?
3. Tree cover in NCR’s largest city is not evenly distributed
Despite Quezon City's tree cover surpassing the WHO's recommendations, residents contend with disproportionate levels of environmental burdens. The city's tree cover is predominantly concentrated in barangays where few or no people live, exacerbating the disparity of environmental challenges across different communities.
ABS-CBN News used tree cover data from the Quezon City Planning and Development Office to identify how it has changed in a span of eight years.
Of the over 16,000 hectares of Quezon City’s land area, roughly 3,300 of it was covered by trees in 2009. Eight years later, the figure grew slightly with trees covering more than 4,700 hectares – accounting for 29% of the densely-populated city’s land area.
Home to a watershed and a handful of parks, it is not surprising that the highest proportion of tree cover was logged in the Reservoir, a forest reserve without human settlement but is nestled within Barangay Greater Lagro.
80% of the 2,400 hectares of land in the Reservoir had tree cover in 2017.
Trailing behind the Reservoir is Quezon Memorial Circle, a popular recreational park in the heart of the city. With almost 12 out of its 30-hectare land area covered by trees, it’s no wonder why people flock to the circle for much needed fresh air.
Overall, the majority of barangays have observed an increase in tree cover – a positive development attributed to a better sense of environmental awareness and climate change in recent years. However, even as most barangays show improvement, none have tree cover that spans at least half of their land area.
In its latest monitoring, Barangay Pasong Tamo emerged as the top barangay in terms of tree cover, accounting for about 40% of its land area. This figure is up by 28 percentage points from 11% just eight years ago, marking it as the most significant increase among all areas in the city.
Pasong Tamo’s 497 hectares is home to a mix of commercial establishments, loosely-packed communities and high-end private subdivisions. Trees with significant canopy line private streets and are a reprieve from excessive heat.
Pasong Tamo is joined by other barangays like Holy Spirit, Fairview, UP Campus and Pansol as having higher tree cover compared to other Quezon City Barangays.
Not too far away is Escopa IV, another barangay in Quezon City baking under the rising heat. In this community, residents have no green places to shelter or to help cool the air.
Stark contrast: Drone videos of barangays with the most and least tree cover
Barangay Escopa IV has the lowest proportion of tree cover which is seen to exacerbate heat felt by residents / Credit: Nestor Licuanan.
4. Dense communities with low tree cover bear the brunt of extreme heat
Barangay Escopa IV, has been Priscilla Adorna’s home for as long as she could remember. Despite the familiarity and strong sense of community, she acknowledges the challenge of living in this pocket of Quezon City especially at a time when the El Niño has loomed into the country’s dry season.
"Pag lumalabas ka po dyan, lalo na po sa may kalsada akala mo na naaapoy yung kalsada sa sobrang init. Ganun po masakit sa mata, mainit, masakit sa balat" she said.
(When you go out onto the streets, it feels like it’s on fire. It’s that hot! It’s painful to the eyes and skin).
Escopa IV is among the smallest barangays in Quezon City – second only to its sibling, Escopa I, which occupies a measly 1.28 hectares of land.
Throughout the years, the number of residents in Escopa IV has steadily swelled; the latest figure being almost 2,000 individuals. Spanning only a mere 1.6 hectares, this translates to around 1,984 individuals living in one hectare. The area has been overtaken by homes which can only make the most of available vertical space.
On one side where the Barangay Hall is located, the street is narrow – big enough for just one vehicle to pass by its alley-sized main artery. Inner streets leading to homes are much smaller.
Escopa IV is divided into upper and lower portions by the 40-kilometer Circumferential Road 5, a six-lane national road connecting northern and southern cities of Metro Manila.
With huge amounts of concrete that blankets the barangay, dwellings of residents included, Escopa IV is rendered a barren community, save for the potted foliage that punctuate terraces and rooftops in the hopes of providing more than just greens for residents.
Out of the 142 barangays in the Philippine’s largest city, Escopa IV has the lowest proportion of tree cover – only 1.48% of its total land area.
When the mercury is too high, Adorna resorts to one thing to expel the scorching heat from their walls.
“Binubuhasan po namin yung pader namin, pati kalsada binabasa namin dahil sa sobrang init talaga. Nakaranas po kami noong mga panahon na yun na pati yung bubong, binabasa namin ng tubig,” she said.
(We pour water over the walls, even the pavements because they can get really hot. We’ve even experienced having to flush our roofs with water.)
The extreme heat trapped in this community, according to Dr. John Manalo of the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) is a phenomenon called the urban heat island (UHI) effect.
“This is the unusual warming that we feel more in urban areas as compared to its surrounding rural area,” he explains.
Residents of Barangay Escopa IV bore the brunt of extreme heat during the El Niño and dry season which was further amplified by structures like cement, concrete, metal and glass / Credit: Raphael Bosano, ABS-CBN News.
Contrary to rural areas with significant proportions of vegetation and tree cover that help reduce temperatures, urban environments are filled with structures like buildings, made of concrete and metal, which exacerbate the heat retention, especially during the day time. These structures retain heat well into the night, defying the natural cycle of dissipation and prolonging the uncomfortably high temperatures in the city.
“Terrestrial radiation, or heat coming from the earth, isn’t released right away into the atmosphere but tends to transfer from one building to another,” Manalo says. “This is why warming is much more enhanced in urban areas.”
Dense communities are always more vulnerable in these situations.
“Isa sa mga pinakamainit ay yung informal settlers na lugar at tsaka yung residential area. Yung mga lugar po talaga na intact yung mga tao, maraming mga tao, more likely mas malaki yung tendency na mas mataas yung UHI doon.”
(Informal settler communities are usually the warmest as well as residential areas where people are more compact. It’s these areas where there is a higher tendency for warmer UHI.)
Escopa IV is not alone. Other barangays like Escopa I and Capri are also as crowded – over a thousand individuals living in a hectare with very little room for trees. Both barangays have less than five% of their total land areas covered by greens.
Residents in other barangays are luckier. But while the number of people per hectare living in other areas slightly ease, data still reveal a troubling statistic: three out of every 10 barangays have less than 10% of their total land area covered by trees.
This means residents and passersby in a significant number of barangays are still subjected to higher levels of heat.
Escopa IV local chief executive, Laila Arcega, admits there isn’t really much that can be done by residents to increase green space and taper down heat in their community but to plant in pots and place it outside their homes – something which also takes up space.
Some owners of structures, however, should be lauded for their effort to save the lone tree where their home stands. From one of the houses, protruded a slender trunk which branched out into smaller sections, its leaves many and vibrant. From the roof of a small store just a couple of meters away stood a thin palm tree, its image clearly reflecting its constrained environment.
But one tree, even two, will never be enough.
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5. Exposure to extreme heat without green spaces exacerbates heat-related diseases
Prolonged exposure to high temperatures can have devastating effects on one’s health, according to both Manalo and Adorna.
For Adorna, those who are most at risk are the elderly who try to escape the heat trapped in homes by going outside. Yet once they do, they also expose themselves to the sun’s radiation.
“Maraming nahi-heat stroke. Nagkakasakit ang matanda at bata. Mga kapitbahay po, nadadala sila sa doctor kasi nga na-high blood po.”
(There are those who suffer heat stroke. Both the young and elderly fall ill. Some neighbors are brought to hospitals because of hypertension.)
It has been the norm for elderly residents in Escopa IV to pass time along the community’s shaded alleys to escape the heat trapped inside their homes. They only return later in the afternoon when the sun’s harsh rays retire for the day and heat slowly dissipates
Other common illnesses that affect residents, especially children, during extremely hot weather, include measles and chickenpox, according to the Department of Health (DOH). Adorna said some were still recovering at the time of her interview.
Extreme heat has also forced Filipinos to seek refuge and cool down in malls. The centralized air conditioning in these establishments have attracted hundreds, if not thousands, per day.
After the country’s dry season began, a wave of pertussis cases followed. In the first quarter of 2024, Quezon City logged 23 cases of pertussis prompting the local government to declare an outbreak. Other parts of the country also had their share of cases.
Aside from ditching what used to be stringent health protocols due to the pandemic, health officials have pointed to crowded indoor spaces as potential reasons for the spread of the bacterial infection.
6. Few barangays allocate funding for environment-related projects
In a list of budget allocations per barangay from the Quezon City Budget Department, 81 out of the 142 barangays in Quezon City aligned a portion of their budget for greening projects from 2017 to 2023.
Escopa IV consistently had one of the lowest budgets among the 142 barangays in the city, ranging between P5 million and P6 million per year.
Meanwhile, Pasong Tamo, among other barangays with much higher tree cover, had budgets worth more than triple of Escopa IV.
Portions of the barangay budget, according to the Department of Budget Management, may be geared towards, but not limited to, development projects, calamities and even for the Sangguniang Kabataan (Youth Council).
In 2017, only 11 barangays allocated funding for environment-related projects ranging from park and street rehabilitation, urban farming to tree planting. The years that followed saw a growth in the number of barangays allocating some of their funds for the improvement of their environment.
For a crowded community composed mostly of low-income families, greening may not necessarily be a household or even a barangay priority.
7. Missing poverty data and missing air pollution data make it impossible to pinpoint the most vulnerable communities
Data requests on poverty incidence for every barangay in Quezon City were not fulfilled and no public data sources exist on barangay level poverty in Metro Manila. Such data is crucial to understanding the relationship between socio-economic inequality and lack of access to green spaces and determining which communities are suffering the most.
Green spaces are not only crucial for cooling down cities, but also for combatting poor air quality.
Through photosynthesis, trees absorb carbon dioxide in the air. This process yields an extremely important byproduct – oxygen. Trees, therefore, not only reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and help mitigate climate change. More importantly, they produce the oxygen we breathe, making them a vital part of a balanced and healthy environment.
Metro Manila does not gather barangay level air quality data or temperature data, which once again, makes it impossible to determine which communities are suffering the most.
Long-term exposure to polluted air can cause a myriad of respiratory diseases including asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder and worse, lung cancer. A 2023 study published in The Lancet cites recent research showing how lung cancer in never-smokers is “significantly affected” by secondhand smoke and high levels of pollution.
The same study reveals that the annual average air quality index surpasses safe levels recommended by the World Health Organization by 120%. Hence air pollution control, among a list of other measures, is recommended as a priority preventive strategy to curb the second most common type of cancer in the country, next to breast cancer.
8. Quezon City is making plans for a greener city
Walkways, green spaces, parks, a lush environment and a community taking full advantage of this gem in the heart of Metro Manila. These are just some of the aspirations of the Quezon City local government.
But at the height of every daydream, Architect Red Avelino, Officer-In-Charge of the City’s Parks Development and Administration Department (PDAD), is always pulled back to reality once he realizes the gargantuan task ahead.
The easiest way the local government can encourage residents to, in one way or another, drive up green spaces is by providing seedlings to residents to plant fruit-bearing trees in communities, particularly in their own private spaces.
Because such trees yield produce which they can consume, they see it as an effective way for people living in crowded areas to “greenify” their communities to a certain extent.
“That’s one way to encourage them because if we told them to plant narra trees in their backyards, they probably won’t agree. We’re also trying to encourage farms in areas like schools where there is ample space. The only challenge is in informal settler areas where there is really no backyard,” he said.
Avelino says the local government is serious in making Quezon City more sustainable and livable as stated in the 10th point of Mayor Joy Belmonte’s 14-point agenda. At present, the city has 248 parks – a mix of community, linear, pocket and vertical gardens – which, according to Avelino, is projected to double by 2030. With this, the local government also targets to plant one million trees throughout the city in the same timeframe.
The latest in a string of projects that aims to increase green space and make it more accessible, is the Quezon City Elevated Landscaped Promenade which, upon completion, would link the Quezon Memorial Circle to the Ninoy Aquino Parks and Wildlife Center.
“There’s a master plan for the Quezon City Circle. We’re trying to preserve and protect as many trees as we can, but it’s going to be a total rehab and it’s not going to look like anything from what it is right now,” Avelino said.
Designed by the City Architect’s Office and executed by the Engineering Department in coordination with the DENR, photos from the local government show the elevated promenade covered with vegetation and accessible to both pedestrians and bicycle riders. However, no exact date of the project’s completion has been released by the local government.
The local government hopes that through everyone’s collective effort, the aspiration of a greener Quezon City – one that is even more livable – will eventually come to the fore.
But while extreme heat may subside in the coming weeks, the absence of trees in many communities affects more than just relief from the high temperature.
As the El Niño Southern Oscillation shifts back to neutral, the likelihood of swinging towards La Niña increases, bringing excessive rainfall.
Trees and vegetation will remain crucial in mitigating the impacts of this climatic shift.
Methodology
Data on tree cover for each Quezon City barangay was acquired from the Quezon City Planning and Development Office for the years 2009 and 2017. According to the QCPDO, no monitoring or surveys of tree cover has been conducted after 2017. The two datasets were scraped, cleaned and analyzed and can be accessed here.
Reporting for this story was supported by the Environmental Data Journalism Academy – a program of Internews’ Earth Journalism Network and Thibi.
Banner image: Barangay Escopa IV has the lowest proportion of tree cover which is seen to exacerbate heat felt by residents / Credit: Nestor Licuanan.
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