08/11/2025
🙏
[CRITICAL] Typhoon Tino showed its strength in Cebu - but the scale of the damage did not come from the storm alone. It came from what was already missing.
For generations, Cebu was covered in thick mountain forests that protected the land. Those forests held the soil, absorbed heavy rain, and slowed down water before it reached the lowlands. The mountains were once alive with native trees, birds, and clean flowing rivers.
Today, less than 2% of Cebu’s natural forest remains.
Not tree farms. Not coconut groves.
True forest. The kind that protects life.
Over time, the highlands were cleared for logging, charcoal-making, housing, quarrying, and road construction. Land was sold, hills were cultivated, and the mountains were slowly stripped bare. It did not happen overnight. It happened little by little, piece by piece, until we looked up one day and realized there was almost nothing left.
When forests disappear, the land can no longer hold the rain.
Water doesn’t soak into roots and soil - it runs fast and hard downhill.
Rivers fill with mud and stone.
Roads collapse.
Homes are flooded.
Communities suffer.
So when Typhoon Tino arrived, the rain did not fall on forests.
It fell on exposed earth.
What we are seeing now is not just a natural disaster.
It is the result of choices made long before the storm formed over the sea.
And we cannot change the past.
But we are responsible for what comes next.
Cebu does not need more fast-growing plantations planted for shade alone.
It needs real forests restored - native trees that rebuild soil, cool the land, and revive the waters:
Narra, Molave, Ipil, Banaba, Balete, and even the rare Cebu Cinnamon that is found nowhere else on earth.
Reforestation is not just planting.
It is healing the land.
It is giving back what was taken.
This is not about blame.
It is about understanding cause and effect.
The storm was natural - but the vulnerability was man-made.
If we want fewer tragedies in the years ahead, we must stop thinking of forests as “empty land” and remember they are our first shield - the one we lost, and the one we can still bring back… slowly, patiently, and with intention.
May Cebu rise again, not just by rebuilding what was destroyed,
but by restoring what once protected it.
Source: Google and Cebu Technological University. Pinned comment.
