This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: For years, residents of a flood-prone Philippine island north of Manila have elevated their homes atop layer upon layer of concrete, only to see floodwaters threaten them again. Burdened by strong storm surges, land subsidence and rising seas exacerbated by climate change, the 3,000 residents of tiny Pamarawan Island have turned to bamboo poles and discarded oyster shells to build a barrier aimed at weakening waves and managing floods.
The unusual approach offers a nature-based alternative for a country still grappling with a multibillion-dollar scandal that drove public fury over substandard—and at times nonexistent—concrete flood-control projects. "We were terrified whenever there were typhoons. We couldn't sleep at night," fisherman Edgar Javier told on a recent visit, recalling how strong waves once brought down one of his home's concrete walls.
"Whenever the waves hit, the wall shakes." The project began when the city government of Malolos, home to the island, launched a study with a Dutch engineering consultancy. "(Concrete infrastructure) projects won't suffice," Mayor Christian Natividad told AFP. While the project, the first of its kind in the country, initially faced resistance from officials and residents working without a blueprint, Natividad said they had "nothing to lose." "It's like you accept daily flooding or you do something else with risk," he said.
By May last year, workers, many of them residents, had begun installing bamboo poles packed with brushwood along the coast. They are designed to slow water flow and trap sediment, with the goal of gradually raising the seabed and supporting mangrove growth. When journalists visited the site, workers were building an oyster-shell breakwater about 100 meters (330 feet) offshore.
Under the searing heat, men in caps pounded wooden stakes used to secure coconut-fiber bags filled with shells on an artificial shore first created with sea sand. "This breakwater's main purpose is to lessen the impact of the wave before it can reach the community," project manager Lyana Galang told AFP, adding that the oyster-shell barriers work in concert with bamboo sediment traps. Filipino scientist Antonio Contreras said the Philippines had long relied heavily on concrete dikes and seawalls, many undertaken without adequate study.
"We have altered the environment so much that we tend to work against nature when in fact we should work with it," Contreras told AFP, noting that some design flaws linked to corruption had cost lives. But nature-based solutions were not a universal answer, he warned, particularly during catastrophic floods, and should complement conventional infrastructure. Contreras said the approach in Pamarawan could be replicated elsewhere, provided local environmental conditions were carefully taken into account.
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