Manila facing worsening floods

Prepared: A standby rescue boat hanging along a street in Marikina, a suburb of Manila, in case of floods. — AFP

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 fuelled by population growth have stripped the once-densely forested Philippines of much of its trees.