🌪️ Typhoon Tino: When Progress Cuts Through Mountains

When Typhoon Tino unleashed its fury across Cebu, Negros, and Palawan, it left more than a trail of destruction — it uncovered the truth we have long refused to face:

many of our “natural” disasters are man-made in consequence, fueled by greed, corruption, and reckless development masked as progress.

⚒️ Mining and the Price of Reversal

In April 2021, then-President Rodrigo Duterte signed Executive Order No. 130, lifting the nine-year moratorium on new mining agreements imposed by President Benigno Aquino III in 2012 through EO 79.

The justification? To “boost revenues” and “revive the economy” in the wake of the pandemic. [¹][²]

But the effect was the reopening of over a hundred pending mining applications — many dormant for decades — across the archipelago. [³][⁴]

In areas like Palawan and Negros, where mountains serve as natural shields against storms, mining operations and deforestation have weakened entire ecosystems. What once held the soil firm now slides into rivers with every downpour.

The promise of “responsible mining” rings hollow when communities are left buried beneath mud — a high price to pay for gold we’ll never hold.

“For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”

— Mark 8:36

🏗️ When We Cut Mountains for a View

In Cebu, the mountain cuts are impossible to miss. Developments like Monterrazas de Cebu — praised for luxury and panoramic vistas — have become the face of unchecked urban expansion.

Behind the concrete glamour lies the uncomfortable truth: to build these dreams, we carved through living mountains that once absorbed our floods and anchored our land.

Each cut slope redirects water’s natural flow; each removed tree erases a barrier that once protected lives.

So when Typhoon Tino came, water took back its course — straight through roads, subdivisions, and homes.

And yet, real estate continues to boast of “development.”

But what do you call development when it erases the very land we stand on?

💸 The Ghost Projects That Drown Us

Billions have been poured into flood control and drainage improvement projects across the country.

But year after year, every typhoon paints the same tragic scene — homes submerged, rivers overflowing, families clinging to roofs.

Why? Because too many of these projects exist only on paper.

They’re ghost projects — signed, funded, and photographed, but never built.

In truth, the Philippines hasn’t been flooded by rain — it’s been drowned by corruption.

When the people’s money meant to save lives becomes the source of someone’s luxury, we are complicit if we remain silent.

“The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.”

— 1 Timothy 6:10

🌏 Three Islands, One Pattern

Island: Cebu

Key Issue: Mountain cutting and unregulated real

Consequence: Landslides, flash floods

Island: Negros

Key Issue: Logging, mining, and erosion of watershed zones

Consequence: Silted rivers, massive flooding

Island: Palawan

Key Issue: Mining in protected areas

Consequence: River contamination, biodiversity loss

Different provinces, same disease: greed disguised as progress.

Different politicians, same dynasty: profit before people.

🧭 This Is Not About Politics

Let this be an eye-opener, not a partisan attack.

This is not about defending or demonizing a politician, nor showing loyalty to any political dynasty.

Because at the end of the day, we — the ordinary people — suffer the consequences.

When the flood rises, it does not check your party color.

And when disaster strikes, the powerful flee in helicopters, funded by our hard-earned blood money.

They will rebuild their mansions. We will rebuild our lives from mud.

🙏🏽 When Nature Speaks, Heaven Echoes

Typhoon Tino was not just a meteorological event — it was a moral revelation.

It showed us what happens when we violate creation and call it progress, when we exploit resources and call it growth, when we plunder budgets and call it governance.

“The earth mourns and dries up, the world languishes and withers,

the exalted of the earth languish. The earth is defiled by its people.”

— Isaiah 24:4–5

This is not God punishing us; this is creation crying out from abuse.

And every flood, every landslide, every buried village is a reminder that the earth will always testify to human sin.

🌿 What Rebuilding Truly Means

Rebuilding after Tino is not just about clearing roads or restoring power.

It’s about restoring conscience.

It’s about remembering that environmental justice is moral justice — and that silence, too, can be sin.

True reconstruction begins when we:

• Hold accountable those who profit from destruction.

• Reject the illusion that prosperity requires ecological sacrifice.

• Teach stewardship — that the land we till and the mountains we climb are not ours to exploit, but to protect.

Because as long as we value profit over people, and projects over principle, we will keep rebuilding — and keep losing.

✍🏽 Final Reflection: Awakened and Unfiltered

“When leaders lift bans for profit,

when developers carve mountains for luxury,

and when flood control becomes a ghost project,

the poor will always pay the highest price.”

Typhoon Tino was not just a storm — it was a sermon.

And its message is clear:

until we stop mistaking greed for progress and corruption for competence, we will keep reliving this same story, storm after storm.

This is not about loyalty. This is about truth.

Because when the winds come and the waters rise —

they will flee, and we will be left behind.

📚 References

1. Executive Order No. 130 (2021) – Amending Section 4 of EO No. 79 (2012), Office of the President of the Philippines.

2. Executive Order No. 79 (2012) – Institutionalizing and implementing reforms in the mining sector, Office of the President of the Philippines.

3. Mines and Geosciences Bureau (MGB) – Regional Mining Tenement Statistics Reports (Sept 2021).

4. Mongabay News. (2021). “Complete turnaround: Philippines’ Duterte lifts ban on new mining permits.”

5. Rappler. (2021). “Duterte lifts ban on new mining agreements.”

6. Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ). (2021). “Duterte’s mining reversal and the environmental cost of profit.”

7. MGB Public Data Portal – List of mining tenements under process, by region.

8. Photo credit from Province of Cebu Facebook