Danica Soledad
A Multimedia Artist and advocate for the environment. She aims to inform the youth about today’s problems surrounding our environment, believer that a young that is informed can do the
There is a legend about the statue of a woman beside the Marikina River.
Her name was Maria Quina, and she was so pretty that she just loved looking at herself. She lived in a town divided by a clear and lively river. One day, as she sailed to cross the river on a boat, she dropped her small mirror through the water. She tried to reach out as it sank, but stopped when she saw her reflection in the enchanting waters.
But many years later, a statue called “Marikit-Na” was built and it stood by the river. Maria awakens in a new world but now tall, still, and stone. Somehow, she feels connected to the water, but it’s gray, muddy, and doesn’t feel well.
Still, Maria is happy to see the lively town again. People visits the park to enjoy the area, the Marikina River, and the attractions, including Maria.
But at some point, the park disappears, literally. During strong storms, the river rises and causes the park to sink. Maria saw people suffering in the flood. What could have happened to the river she used to know? As the water rose, shande can see her reflection once again, but instead of being fascinated, she becomes terrified, because even when she’s now 40 feet tall, the water surges up to her waist.
After the recent storm, she saw people building walls and removing mud from the river. She feels glad, as it seems that the people and local leaders are fixing the cause of brutal flooding in the city.
But the digging made Maria worried. She felt the river’s life getting distressed, there are less fish and not even the ones she’s familiar of. As it rains more and more these days, Maria ponders, that even if this solution works for now, will it work for a long run? She hopes for better plans to come, because if not, the river, town, and herself could once again face the same fate.
In Marikina City, typhoons bring big challenges, espcially with flooding since it located in a valley. Cutting too many trees, cities growing fast, bad drainage, and more rain from climate change make things worse. To measure how high the water gets, they use the Marikina Bridge, and during big typhonns in 2009 and 2020, it reached 21 meters and 22 meters, respectively. To picture it, the first would reach a statue waist, while the recent one reached her chest.
The Local government and a Japanese agency are working together on a ‘Master Plan’ to fix the flooding issue. They are doing things like digging the river and building walls to control floodwater.
However, these are temporary solutions and might now work if the climate behavior keeps on changing.
Experts say we need more solutions, like having green land areas in flood-prone sports.
of Marikina City are at moderate to high
risk of flooding. A city has lots of concrete,
so when it rains. Floodwater doesn’t get
absorbed by soil, and it rises too quickly. Building walls could make floods worse in other places, so it’s crucial to also have green spaces. China solved this by creating ‘Sponge Cities.’ which are places with lots of green parks that soak up water and stop flooding.
Locals say Marikina River used to be clear and home to diverse fish species, but its current state is not as healthy. People have thrown plastic and chemicals into the river, and being dominated by foreign invasive fishes that were dumped by locals who got tired of take of them as pets. This type of phenomenon causes many fish to go extinct. Constant dradging could futher hurt aquatic life and chase away fish species even more.
Today, there’s only
native fish species remaining. Kanduli is the native species that still swims in the waters of the Marikina River.
Climate change is like a wound. If you don’t take care of it, it will get worse over time. Now, imagine that flood walls and river dredging are like bandages for a wound, it wears off quickly, so you will have to change it again and again.
Let’s look at two scenarios:
In one scenario, healing the wound with bandages alone didn’t help it. The wound got infected and spreated out, causing other parts to suffer. This is where the flood walls couldn’t control the rising water, that it started flooding in other areas. While the continuous digging, wasn’t enough to hold all the water and wasted many aquatic life.
In another scenario, the wound was carefully cleaned, medicated, and bandaged altogether, to avoid if from getting infected. Where the flood walls are build with natural soiled lands, to absorb the water before going to other areas. There’s also controlled digging, that saves a part of the aquatic life in the river. Saving towns from high-rise floods while protecting the river aquatic environment.
Climate Change may be Earth’s wound, but ignore it, it will wound all of us. There’s this saying where Filipinos easily bounce-back from hardships, it’s the quote: “Filipino people are resilient”. We have been resilient for too long. And maybe like China, this time we should try and make Filipino places to be resilient.
Maria is like a lot of humans, who tend to turn away from our surroundings,
and it caused her life. When she wakes as a statue, she saw her town in the new world being ignored by the people, and not it’s slowly taking the life of aquatic species, people, and the even world. So woudn’t the second scenario be more fitting for our future?
