Wetter storms, deforestation: Manila faces worsening floods
From her house in a Manila suburb, Rowena Jimenez can't see the bare mountains around the built-up city. But she feels the impact of deforestation every time her living room floods.
Slash-and-burn farming, illegal logging, open-pit mining and development fueled by population growth have stripped the once-densely forested Philippines of much of its trees.
In Manila, where more than 13 million people live, low-lying areas are often inundated when storms lash the Sierra Madre mountain range, which lies east of the city and acts as a barrier to severe weather.
But without enough trees to help absorb the rain, huge volumes of water run off the slopes and into waterways that flow into the metropolis, turning neighbourhoods into disease-infested swamps.
Jimenez, 49, has lost count of the number of times the Marikina river has broken its banks and flooded the ground floor of her family's two-bedroom concrete house, a few blocks from the water's edge.
"There is always fear that it will happen again," said Jimenez, who lives with her husband, youngest daughter, sister, nephew and mother.
"Your heart sinks because you realise the things you worked so hard to buy will be destroyed again."
Jimenez blames environmental "abuses" upstream in the nearby Upper Marikina River Basin—a catchment spanning roughly 26,000 hectares (64,500 acres) in the southern foothills of the Sierra Madre.
In Manila, low-lying areas are often inundated with water when storms lash the Sierra Madre mountain range.
Masungi forest ranger Kuhkan Maas has been abused and even shot for trying to protect the land, where he has planted thousands of trees in the past decade.