Trickles.

(From Philippine Daily Inquirer)

THE PERENNIAL problem of floods is a case of nearly everyone being at fault. A recent symposium at the University of the Philippines featured geologist Kelvin Rodolfo expounding on how fully the blame can be farmed out. The poor with their dependence on artesian wells; the wealthy with their housing developments and the logging they profit from; the middle class and wealthy, too, with their fishponds; and the government, which covers everything, including natural systems of drainage, with concrete, and which cannot (or will not) enforce laws: all these come together to create the nightmare that is the Philippines whenever heavy rains occur.

The surprising thing about Rodolfo's observations was that garbage, according to him, wasn't the cause of the mess that Metro Manila and other areas became during the recent rains. Garbage doesn't help-but there are deeper reasons.

It should be a cause for alarm that our country lost more lives to the recent rains than did Taiwan, which bore the brunt of the typhoon that merely passed in our vicinity. This goes to show how perilous the lives of so many of our people are. For it's not as if we're unused to strong monsoon rains.

If there is one big lesson to be gained from Rodolfo's remarks, it is that the idea that government can do everything, and is responsible for everything, has become increasingly outmoded. While it is true that government has vast regulatory functions and powers, there is still the element of private responsibility. For example, government since the administration of President Ramon Magsaysay has made a fetish out of providing barangays with artesian wells. And yet there are also many private developments and neighborhoods that have also installed artesian wells, and other kinds of wells with pumps. As Rodolfo pointed out, pumping water out of subterranean areas lowers the level of the ground- enough, over time, to make areas more flood-prone.

The real question then, from the recent experience of millions of Filipinos, is, what can we do to reduce the calamitous ...