Cebu City’s CLUP as a Regional Economic Instrument:

Why Land Economics Must Anchor Urban Planning

Urban land use planning in Cebu City cannot be treated as a purely local spatial exercise. As the primary economic anchor of Central Visayas (Region VII), Cebu City performs metropolitan and regional functions that extend far beyond its administrative boundaries — economically, socially, and spatially.

Cebu City in the Regional Economic Structure

Central Visayas remains one of the fastest-growing regional economies in the Philippines. In 2024, the region’s gross regional domestic product (GRDP) reached about ₱1.28 trillion, expanding at 7.3 percent — higher than the national average — and maintaining its position as the largest economy in Visayas and Mindanao.

Within this context, Cebu City continues to serve as the regional engine:

In 2024, Cebu City’s economy expanded by about 7 percent, with a total output of roughly ₱334.48 billion, driven by trade, finance, and professional services.
According to recent Provincial Product Accounts, Cebu City accounted for about 22.6 percent of Central Visayas’ regional economy in 2023, second only to the entire Province of Cebu.

Cebu City’s economic footprint is not contained within city boundaries: it affects employment patterns, investment flows, infrastructure utilization, and land markets across multiple provinces and cities in the region.

Zoning as a Regional Economic Decision

Urban economic theory explains that development rights — created and modified by zoning — are capitalized into land values and development incentives.

In Cebu City:

The IT Park–Lahug corridor drives strong agglomeration effects.
The CBD–Port core remains a critical commercial and logistics hub.
The South Road Properties (SRP) influence is reshaping coastal development patterns.
Fringe and upland barangays are facing conversion pressures with implications for peri-urban growth.

These dynamics produce a complex land value gradient that must be recognized and regulated in the CLUP.

Regional Spillover Effects

When land values in Cebu City rise due to zoning changes, the pressure is felt in neighboring LGUs:

Housing demand spills over into Consolacion, Lilo-an, and Talisay.
Commuter flows cross city boundaries, stressing transport corridors.
Agricultural land conversion accelerates in fringe municipalities.

This illustrates that Cebu City’s land use decisions are not isolated. They shape regional patterns of growth and require a planning perspective consistent with broader regional development strategies — including the Central Visayas Regional Development Plan.

Why RLUC and DHSUD Review Cebu City’s CLUP

The institutional review structure reflects this regional reality.

The Regional Land Use Committee (RLUC), operating within the regional planning structure of the Department of Economy, Planning, and Development (DEPDev), conducts technical assessment of CLUPs to ensure consistency with regional spatial strategy and economic coherence.

Meanwhile, the Department of Human Settlements and Urban Development (DHSUD) serves as the national approving authority — guaranteeing alignment with national urban development policy, hazard integration, infrastructure standards, and housing obligations.

This layered review is not bureaucratic duplication. It is recognition that Cebu City’s land use decisions have regional repercussions, and thus must be evaluated not only for local coherence but for their impact across the metropolitan and regional system.

Infrastructure and Fiscal Discipline

Allowing density increases without aligning them with infrastructure capacity produces:

Higher capital expenditure demands
Road and drainage system overload
Greater disaster risk exposure

A responsible CLUP must factor in not just spatial demand but also infrastructure load-testing and projected fiscal impact. Growth may increase revenue — but it may also create unfunded liabilities if infrastructure and risk costs are excluded from the analysis.

Climate Risk as an Economic Variable

Hazard-prone areas — floodplains, landslide slopes, coastal lowlands — are not merely environmental concerns. They are economic risk multipliers that, if developed without restraint, impose long-term costs on public budgets and private livelihoods.

To address this, the CLUP must define:

Net Developable Land =
Gross Land – Hazard Constraints – Easements – Protected Zones

This adjusted baseline must inform density decisions.

Housing Affordability and Land Cost Capitalization

In high-demand corridors of Cebu City, land cost often represents a major portion of overall housing price. If land value increases faster than housing supply expands, zoning changes alone will not yield affordability — they may worsen it.

This underscores the need for inclusionary mechanisms and spatial strategies that place housing close to jobs, infrastructure, and hazard-safe areas.

Cebu City as Metropolitan Steward

The CLUP of Cebu City must operate as:

A regulator of land value winds
A coordinator of infrastructure investments
A climate risk filter
A promoter of equitable housing outcomes
A mediator of regional economic stability

When Cebu City adjusts density and land use rules, the regional economy adjusts with it.

Planning for Value and Region

Cebu City’s CLUP must transcend the narrow framing of zoning colors on paper. It must be anchored in land economics and regional economic logic — because spatial decisions in this city do not stay within its borders. They shape the future of Central Visayas and influence conditions well beyond.

Beyond the City: Carbon Market and Regional Development

When we speak about Carbon Market, the conversation is often framed as a city-level redevelopment issue. But from an economist’s and urban planner’s perspective, that framing is incomplete.

Carbon Market is not just a Cebu City asset.
It is a regional economic node embedded within:

The Cebu City Comprehensive Land Use Plan (CLUP)
The broader Central Visayas food system
Inter-municipal agricultural and fisheries value chains

Understanding this connection is essential. Because what happens in Carbon Market does not stay in Carbon Market.If the Cebu City CLUP provides the spatial framework within the city, regional development provides the functional framework beyond it.

Carbon Market does not operate within the administrative boundaries of Cebu City alone. Its economic reach extends to:

Vegetable-producing upland municipalities
Coastal fishing communities
Neighboring provinces supplying agricultural and marine products
Informal and micro-enterprise processors embedded in peri-urban zones

In regional economic terms, Carbon Market is a growth linkage node. It performs three critical functions:

Market Access for Peripheral Producers

Regional development theory emphasizes that urban centers must provide stable demand anchors for rural economies. Without reliable access to urban markets, smallholder farmers and fishers face:

Price instability
Dependence on trader-lenders
Higher transaction costs
Reduced bargaining power

Carbon Market shortens this chain. It allows producers from outside Cebu City to plug directly into an urban demand center with high turnover and price transparency.

Weakening that node without creating an equivalent alternative risks pushing producers back into fragmented, less competitive arrangements — deepening regional inequality rather than reducing it.

Cost Distribution Across the Region

When a central distribution hub functions efficiently, it:

Reduces duplication of logistics
Concentrates transport routes
Facilitates bulk aggregation
Lowers spoilage rates

Research on vegetable supply chain losses in Central Philippines shows that inefficiencies in aggregation and storage significantly increase losses before produce reaches consumers. Likewise, studies on Cebu’s fish trade highlight how centralized nodes stabilize pricing and reduce uncertainty in time-sensitive transactions.

If Carbon Market’s role as a distribution hub diminishes, costs do not disappear — they are redistributed. Often, they shift:

Upstream to producers (lower farmgate prices)
Downstream to consumers (higher retail prices)
Outward to peripheral municipalities (logistics strain)

Regional development is not simply about growth. It is about where costs and benefits are spatially allocated.

Urban–Rural Integration

The Cebu City CLUP governs land within the city. But urban land-use decisions influence regional integration.

A well-functioning urban core should:

Complement rural production
Support peri-urban logistics
Serve as an accessible convergence point

Carbon Market historically performs this integrative function. It is a bridge — not a barrier — between rural supply and urban consumption.

If the urban core shifts toward higher-value commercial uses without preserving essential economic infrastructure, the result is functional displacement. Wholesale and distribution activities may be pushed outward into areas less prepared to handle them, increasing congestion, transport time, and land-use conflict.

From a regional planning standpoint, that is inefficiency — not progress.

Resilience Beyond Boundaries

The CLUP incorporates resilience planning within city limits. But food systems operate regionally.

During typhoons, port disruptions, or fuel shocks, centralized and accessible aggregation points allow for rapid redistribution and emergency coordination.

Carbon Market enhances:

Supply continuity
Rapid turnover of perishable goods
Network density among traders and suppliers

If that density fragments, regional resilience weakens.

In a climate-vulnerable region like Central Visayas, food-system stability is not optional. It is structural.

The Regional Development Question

Urban redevelopment often focuses on maximizing land value within city boundaries. But regional development asks a broader question:

Does this spatial change strengthen or weaken urban–rural economic integration?

Carbon Market is not simply an asset of Cebu City. It is a component of Central Visayas’ food economy.

Modernization is possible — even necessary. But modernization must:

Preserve small-producer access
Maintain low transaction costs
Strengthen logistics efficiency
Protect affordability for consumers
Align with the CLUP’s structural intent
Support inclusive regional growth

Otherwise, a local land-use adjustment may unintentionally generate regional economic imbalance.

Planning as System Stewardship

Planning is not merely about zoning compliance or real estate optimization.

It is about system stewardship.

Carbon Market sits at the intersection of:

Land-use planning (CLUP)
Inclusive value-chain development
Regional economic integration
Food-system resilience
Spatial equity

Understanding it as regional infrastructure — not merely local property — allows Cebu to evolve without destabilizing the very economic networks that sustain it.

Author’s Note

Agosto is an economist and urban planner, and a practicing real estate professional whose work examines land-use governance, market institutions, and regional economic systems. His analyses engage the Cebu City Comprehensive Land Use Plan (CLUP) in relation to public markets, food-system resilience, and inclusive regional development in Central Visayas.

Carbon Market: More Than a Marketplace — A Critical Node in Regional Food Value Chains

When we talk about Carbon Market, the discussion too often centers on infrastructure — bricks, stalls, modernization, redevelopment. But to understand its true economic role, we have to move beyond the physical structure and look at the value chains that give it meaning. From an economist’s and urban planner’s perspective, Carbon Market is not simply a venue; it is a distribution hub, a transaction institution, and a key node where multiple food supply chains converge.

From Farms and Fisheries to City Plates

Academic research helps explain why this matters.

In the Central Philippines, vegetable supply chains are highly vulnerable to losses. Studies show that up to 30–40% of vegetable produce can be lost before it reaches consumers — losses that occur because of poor transport infrastructure, multiple intermediaries, inadequate cold storage, and fragmented market access. These inefficiencies translate into lost income for farmers and higher prices for consumers. (ResearchGate: “Supply chain losses of vegetables in Central Philippines”)

Separately, research into the fish trade in Cebu City highlights how the flow of seafood from producers to consumers is shaped by a complex web of traders, processors, auction markets, and retail outlets. The study illustrates that fish supply chains are highly relational: small fishers depend on buyers who bring their catch into the city, while consumers depend on urban markets to provide diversity, quality, and affordability. (ResearchGate: “The Dynamics of the Fish Trade in Cebu City”)

These findings are not abstract. They confirm something we see every day: food supply in cities like Cebu depends on efficient, accessible, and well-functioning distribution nodes. Carbon Market is one of the most important of these.

Carbon Market as an Institutional Hub

The UP CIDS study on inclusive agricultural value-chain models makes a central point: markets are not neutral transactional spaces. They are institutions — systems of practices, rules, norms, and networks that shape how producers, intermediaries, and consumers interact. When these institutions function well, they lower transaction costs, reduce uncertainties, and give small producers real access to buyers. When the institutions fail, producers are forced into exploitative arrangements, risk losses, and see declining returns on their labor and investment. (UP CIDS)

This institutional perspective helps us understand Carbon Market not just as a physical place, but as an enabling environment for exchange — a hub where logistics, finance, information, and relationships come together.

Why Changes to Carbon Market Disrupt Food Supply Chains

When the character of Carbon Market changes — whether through redevelopment, commercialization, privatization, or regulatory transformation — the effects are rarely neutral. Instead, they reshape the very value chains that feed the city.

Here’s how the available evidence explains this:

1. Supply Chain Losses Are Real and Costly
Vegetable supply chains in the Central Philippines already experience significant losses before produce ever reaches consumers. Any disruption to a major distribution node like Carbon Market — which serves as a point of aggregation and redistribution — will likely exacerbate these losses unless deliberate efficiency and preservation mechanisms are put in place. (ResearchGate: Vegetable losses study)

2. Fisheries Trade Relies on Complex Networks
Fish traders in Cebu City rely on established channels to bring catch from coastal producers into the urban market. Carbon Market participates in this web of relationships — sanctioning trust, pricing norms, and informal arrangements that help balance risk between fishers, buyers, and sellers. Disrupting these networks without substituting effective alternatives increases uncertainty and costs within the entire system. (ResearchGate: Fish trade dynamics)

3. Institutional Voids Hurt Small Actors
The UP CIDS research underscores that without strong market institutions — whether formal contracts or informal norms — small producers get squeezed by intermediaries who set terms, capture rents, and limit market access. When Carbon Market’s institutional role changes without careful planning, these “institutional voids” can widen, leaving small farmers and fishers worse off. (UP CIDS)

Who Bears the Costs?

The outcomes of institutional disruption are not distributed equally:

Smallholder farmers and fishers lose affordable access to markets and often face higher transaction costs.
Vendors and micro-processors face barriers from rising rents, increased compliance costs, or loss of informal financial arrangements.
Consumers — especially low- and middle-income households — face higher prices and reduced access to fresh produce and fish.

This is not speculative. The weight of evidence from multiple studies — in vegetables, fisheries, and institutional economics — shows that food distribution systems are sensitive. They can be improved, but only if redesign respects existing networks and preserves inclusivity.

What Responsible Planning Looks Like

If the goal is to modernize or upgrade Carbon Market — a goal many stakeholders share — it must be guided by principles that reflect its role in multiple value chains:

Maintain space for small producers. Institutional support — from vendor cooperatives to flexible credit arrangements — must remain part of the market’s design.
Invest in logistics and preservation. Cold storage, loading bays, and organized wholesale operations can help reduce supply chain losses.
Strengthen institutions, not dismantle them. Formal contracts, transparent pricing systems, and data-driven logistics can complement — not replace — the informal norms that give small actors agency.
Protect consumer access. Any redevelopment must safeguard affordability and access for regular marketgoers.

Carbon Market as Food-System Infrastructure

Carbon Market is more than a collection of stalls. It is a critical node in the regional food system — an institution that connects farms and fisheries to city plates, mediates relationships and prices, and anchors the everyday flow of goods.

Decisions about its future must go beyond aesthetics or real estate valuations. They must be grounded in economic reality, allied with evidence from supply-chain research, and centered on inclusion. Only then can Carbon Market evolve in a way that strengthens, rather than weakens, the economic ecosystem it supports.

Carbon Market is food-system infrastructure.
Treating it as mere real estate risks undermining Cebu’s food security, livelihoods, and urban resilience.

Agosto is an economist, urban planner, and a practicing real estate professional. His work examines how markets, land, and urban systems shape everyday livelihoods, with a particular focus on public finance, inclusive development, and the public-interest role of urban infrastructure.

Why Cebu City Must Revisit Its 2025 CLUP: Lessons from the Binaliw Upland Landfill

The collapse of the Binaliw landfill in Cebu City has been explained away in familiar terms. It has been called an accident. An operational failure. An unfortunate convergence of circumstances. Some have even framed it as a force majeure—an event no one could have reasonably foreseen.

But when examined through the lenses of land-use planning, environmental governance, and disaster risk management, these explanations do not hold.

Binaliw was not an accident.
It was a foreseeable outcome of a planning decision—one that ignored a fundamental principle already embedded in Cebu City’s own Comprehensive Land Use Plan (CLUP) and the JICA Roadmap for Solid Waste Management:

No engineering solution can outweigh an inherently risky upland location.

The Real Frame

Public discussion has focused heavily on whether Binaliw was an “engineered sanitary landfill.” That framing misses the point.

Even a perfectly designed landfill cannot defeat gravity, slope instability, rainfall concentration, and watershed dynamics inherent in an upland area. Engineering can only mitigate risk within the limits set by geography—it cannot erase those limits.

The correct question is not whether Binaliw was engineered.
The correct question is why an upland, risk-sensitive area was assigned a high-intensity waste function in the first place.

That question leads us directly to the CLUP and the JICA study.

The CLUP: Risk Was Acknowledged—Then Overridden

Under the Cebu City Comprehensive Land Use Plan, barangays like Binaliw are identified as part of the City’s upland and environmentally constrained zones. These areas are characterized by:

Slope and landslide susceptibility
Sensitivity to saturation and runoff
Strong influence on downstream flooding and disaster amplification

The CLUP recognizes that such areas require low-intensity, risk-compatible land uses, with infrastructure treated as conditional and transitional, not permanent or intensifying.

Yet in practice, Binaliw was allowed to operate as a major disposal site for metropolitan waste, accumulating mass far beyond what an upland area can safely bear over time.

This was not an oversight.
It was a planning contradiction.

Mixed-Use Zoning: Where Risk Became a Policy Choice

The most critical vulnerability in the CLUP lies in its allowance of mixed-use or conditional development in upland areas.

In lowland urban settings, mixed-use zoning can enhance resilience and efficiency.
In upland, environmentally constrained zones, it does the opposite.

Mixed-use zoning in uplands opens the door to intensity creep:

Risk is acknowledged but not prohibited.
Projects are approved individually, each appearing compliant.
Cumulative load is ignored.
Carrying capacity is exceeded.

A landfill in an upland area is not merely a land use—it is continuous mass loading. Waste is heavy, compressible, water-retentive, and constantly increasing. No zoning flexibility or engineering detail can change that physical reality.

By permitting mixed-use development in upland zones, the CLUP effectively treated risk as negotiable, rather than as a hard limit.

A Warning Issued Long Before the Collapse

What makes the Binaliw disaster even more troubling is that this exact risk was already identified more than a decade ago.

As early as 2015, the JICA Roadmap for Solid Waste Management in Metro Cebu had already reached a clear and technically grounded conclusion: engineering solutions have inherent limits in upland terrain. The study did not merely recommend better landfill design; it explicitly framed upland disposal as a temporary and diminishing option, one that must be progressively relieved of waste load as part of a metropolitan transition strategy.

The 2015 JICA study recognized several realities that remain unchanged today:

Upland areas are geomorphologically unstable under sustained mass loading;
High rainfall and steep slopes amplify saturation and failure risks;
Waste accumulation in uplands contributes not only to local instability but also to downstream flooding and disaster amplification;
Reliance on existing upland landfills must therefore be reduced over time, not intensified.

In other words, the JICA Roadmap did not assume that better engineering could permanently solve upland disposal risks. It assumed the opposite: that location imposes non-negotiable limits which engineering can only temporarily mitigate.

This is why the roadmap emphasized a phased exit from upland landfill dependence—through waste diversion, metropolitan disposal facilities, and alternative treatment systems. Upland landfills were never envisioned as permanent infrastructure supporting metropolitan waste volumes.

Why the 2025 Cebu City CLUP Must Be Revisited

The collapse of the Binaliw landfill has transformed what was once a technical planning debate into an urgent governance imperative. What is now clear—beyond reasonable dispute—is that the 2025 Cebu City Comprehensive Land Use Plan (CLUP) must be revisited, particularly its treatment of upland areas and mixed-use zoning.

This is no longer a question of preference, ideology, or development philosophy. It is a question of whether land-use policy will continue to contradict geographic reality.

Mixed-use zoning is often defended as a modern, adaptive planning tool. In lowland urban contexts, that is frequently true. In upland, environmentally constrained areas, however, mixed-use zoning becomes a risk multiplier.

It allows:

gradual intensification without clear ceilings;
project-by-project approvals that ignore cumulative impact;
reliance on engineering solutions where geography has already imposed limits.

The CLUP’s mixed-use provision, when applied to uplands, converts known natural constraints into negotiable policy choices. Binaliw demonstrates the cost of that conversion.

What Revisiting the CLUP Should Mean (Not Cosmetic Amendments)

Revisiting the 2025 CLUP must go beyond clarifications or tighter permitting language. It requires structural correction.

At minimum, a revised CLUP should:

Remove or strictly prohibit mixed-use zoning in upland, environmentally constrained areas for high-intensity or mass-loading uses;
Explicitly classify uplands as protection-priority zones, not development reserves;
Treat any allowed infrastructure as transitional, with:
- volume caps,
- sunset clauses,
- mandatory exit timelines;
Align land-use zoning with JICA’s metropolitan transition framework, not short-term disposal convenience.

The Central Policy Lesson

Binaliw has delivered a lesson that planning documents can no longer ignore:

When geography says “no,” zoning must listen.

A CLUP that recognizes upland risk but still permits intensification through mixed-use zoning is internally inconsistent—and now demonstrably unsafe.

A Moment for Course Correction

The call to revisit the 2025 Cebu City CLUP is not anti-development. It is pro-safety, pro-governance, and pro-accountability.

Binaliw should be treated as a planning threshold event—the moment when assumptions were tested against reality and found wanting. To proceed as if nothing fundamental has changed would be to accept that similar disasters are an acceptable cost of “flexibility.”

They are not.

The CLUP must be revised—not because plans failed to exist, but because reality has shown which provisions can no longer be defended.

Planning Is Preventive Law

By the end of 2025, one idea became clearer—not because it was new, but because it finally had a precise legal shape.

Years of working around land use, valuation, environmental constraints, and governance had already revealed a recurring pattern: disasters rarely begin with the event itself. They begin much earlier, quietly, through decisions that shape space, density, and exposure. What the Bar year did was not introduce this reality for the first time, but give it doctrinal clarity.

I came to understand that what we often treat as planning policy is, in truth, law operating in advance.

Planning is usually described in technical terms—maps, zoning colors, land-use matrices, projections stretching years into the future. Because of this, planning questions are often dismissed as administrative or premature, as if they sit outside the core concerns of law. Legal accountability, we are told, comes later—after damage, after injury, after loss.

But this way of thinking misunderstands what planning actually does.

Once a land use plan or zoning ordinance is adopted, it immediately produces legal effects. It authorizes certain uses, prohibits others, and—most importantly—determines where risk is allowed to exist. When residential use is permitted in flood-prone areas, exposure is not accidental. When development is allowed on unstable slopes, vulnerability is not unforeseen. When natural drainage paths are narrowed or built over, flooding is no longer a surprise.

These outcomes do not begin with nature.
They begin with decisions.

Planning as Preventive Law

Preventive law is not an unfamiliar concept. Building codes exist to prevent collapse. Fire regulations exist to prevent loss of life. Health and sanitation laws exist to prevent outbreaks. None of these wait for injury before they matter. Their legal force lies precisely in their ability to act before harm occurs.

Planning belongs to the same family of law, but it operates earlier and more quietly. It governs a stage where future occupants are unknown, where affected communities cannot yet assert their rights, and where consent to risk is rarely informed. That is exactly why the law requires planning to be rational, evidence-based, and compliant with statutory standards.

Seen this way, planning is not optional policy guidance.
It is a preventive legal duty.

The Legal Foundations Already Exist

This understanding is not theoretical. Philippine law already treats planning as a legally mandated function designed to prevent harm.

The 1987 Constitution, particularly Article II, Section 16, obliges the State to protect and advance the right of the people to a balanced and healthful ecology. This duty is preventive in nature. It does not wait for environmental collapse; it requires governance decisions that avoid it.

The Local Government Code (Republic Act No. 7160) reinforces this by vesting local governments with police power and the authority to enact zoning ordinances in the interest of public safety, health, and general welfare. Police power, by definition, is exercised to prevent harm—not merely to respond after the fact. Land-use regulation is one of its clearest preventive expressions.

The Urban Development and Housing Act (Republic Act No. 7279) explicitly requires rational land use and the avoidance of danger areas for human settlements. Allowing communities to be established or intensified in known hazard zones is therefore not just a planning lapse; it is a failure to comply with a statutory preventive mandate.

Environmental laws strengthen this framework. The Philippine Environmental Impact Statement System (Presidential Decree No. 1586) requires environmental impact assessment before project approval. The purpose of the EIA is not remediation but anticipation—to inform decisions so that environmental harm is avoided at the outset.

More recent legislation, such as the Climate Change Act (Republic Act No. 9729) and the Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Act (Republic Act No. 10121), explicitly require risk-informed and hazard-based planning. These laws translate scientific knowledge into legal obligation. Where climate and disaster risks are known or knowable, planning institutions are required to integrate them into land-use decisions.

With the enactment of the Philippine Ecosystem and Natural Capital Accounting System Act (Republic Act No. 11995), the preventive character of planning is made even clearer. By requiring the integration of natural capital considerations into policy and planning, the law recognizes that future environmental loss must be accounted for before decisions are made—not after damage is done.

What the Supreme Court Has Already Said—Implicitly

Philippine jurisprudence has long supported this preventive approach, even if the Court has not always used the term “preventive law.”

In Oposa v. Factoran, the Supreme Court recognized the right of present and future generations to a balanced and healthful ecology, allowing legal action to proceed even before irreversible harm had occurred. The case stands for the principle that environmental protection is anticipatory, not merely remedial.

In MMDA v. Concerned Residents of Manila Bay, the Court emphasized the State’s continuing obligation to protect and rehabilitate the environment. The duty recognized was not episodic or reactive; it was ongoing and proactive—consistent with the idea that governance failures upstream are legally relevant.

In Resident Marine Mammals v. Reyes, the Court applied the precautionary principle and underscored the importance of environmental compliance at the planning and approval stage. While framed in terms of precaution, the decision affirmed that legality is assessed before harm occurs.

Similarly, in West Tower Condominium Corp. v. First Philippine Industrial Corp., the Court focused on risk creation and foreseeability. The ruling made clear that where risk is foreseeable, and proximity exists, a duty arises—even before catastrophic damage fully unfolds.

Taken together, these cases show a consistent judicial posture: the law does not require disaster as a precondition for accountability. Where duty, foreseeability, and legal authority intersect, courts are prepared to intervene upstream.

Why Planning Is Not a Premature Legal Question

The argument that planning issues are “premature” usually rests on the absence of visible injury. But preventive law does not require collapsed homes or lost lives before it can be questioned. If it did, building codes, environmental clearances, and zoning regulations would only become relevant after failure—rendering prevention meaningless.

Once planning is mandated by law and formally adopted, a duty already exists. Once hazard maps, flood histories, and climate data are available, foreseeability already exists. And once plans authorize exposure to known risks, the legal issue is already present.

Damage does not create the breach.
Damage merely confirms what planning already allowed.

Planning, Climate Risk, and Accountability

Climate change has only sharpened this reality. Risk today is rarely uncertain. Flood pathways are mapped. Rainfall patterns are documented. Slope hazards are classified. Climate projections are publicly available. In legal terms, this means that discretion narrows and responsibility expands.

True adaptation does not mean learning to live with avoidable harm. It means adjusting plans, zoning, and land-use decisions so that foreseeable harm is not embedded into future development. Improving evacuation plans while allowing the same dangerous land uses is not adaptation; it is accommodation of failure.

A Closing Reflection

Understanding planning as preventive law changes how accountability is framed. Zoning maps become evidence, not background. Hazard studies become proof of foreseeability, not optional references. Planning approvals become legally reviewable acts, not purely political choices.

Justice should not begin with compensation after loss.
It should begin with decisions made when harm is still avoidable.

That is the perspective 2025 clarified for me—not as a new discovery, but as a consolidation of experience, doctrine, and observation. As we move forward in an era of climate risk, planning must be treated for what it truly is: the law’s first and most consequential opportunity to prevent harm.

Long before the waters rise, the law already has something to say.

Why the Issuance of the PENCAS IRR Is a Win for Lawful and Sustainable Planning

The recent issuance of the Implementing Rules and Regulations (IRR) of the Philippine Ecosystem and Natural Capital Accounting System (PENCAS) Act by the Department of Human Settlements and Urban Development (DHSUD) marks an important milestone for environmental governance and land-use planning in the Philippines. For those of us who have long argued that development planning must finally reckon with the real value of ecosystems, this moment is both a validation and a turning point.

But it is important to be clear about what this development means—and what it does not.

The IRR is not the beginning of PENCAS compliance. It is the formal operationalization of a legal obligation that already existed.

PENCAS Was Already Law Before the IRR

Republic Act No. 11995, or the PENCAS Act, was signed into law on May 22, 2024. By its own effectivity clause—Section 17—the law took effect fifteen days after publication. From that point on, the policy direction of the law was already binding on government agencies and local governments alike.

The IRR, ceremonially signed on May 22, 2025 and officially published on October 17, 2025, did not create the obligation to comply with PENCAS. It merely provided the technical guidance, standards, and institutional coordination mechanisms to ensure consistent and systematic implementation.

This distinction matters. In Philippine law, the absence—or later issuance—of an IRR does not suspend the effectivity of a statute. The law commands; the IRR explains how to comply.

Why This Matters for Land-Use Planning

Land-use plans, particularly Comprehensive Land Use Plans (CLUPs) and zoning ordinances, are not historical documents. They are forward-looking instruments that shape development decisions for decades. They authorize what can be built, where it can be built, and—just as importantly—what should not be built at all.

Once PENCAS became law, government planners were already required to recognize ecosystems and natural capital as economic assets, not externalities. At the very least, this meant avoiding irreversible land-use decisions affecting forests, watersheds, protected areas, and other ecologically critical systems without accounting for their value.

Total silence or omission is not compliance.

Why the Cebu City CLUP Raised Red Flags

It is against this legal backdrop that concerns were raised over the Cebu City CLUP 2023–2032 and its accompanying zoning ordinance.

On December 15, 2025, amid DHSUD’s ongoing review of the CLUP, I filed a formal notice and reservation of objection addressed to DHSUD Secretary Jose Ramon Aliling. The purpose was straightforward: to seek a formal review of the plan on the ground that it was not compliant with the provisions of the PENCAS Act.

As I explained in interviews, including to InsiderPH, the objection was filed to flag planning risks arising from the failure to integrate natural capital accounting into land-use decisions—particularly those affecting ecologically critical areas. These were not technical quibbles. They were questions of law.

The argument that PENCAS could not be applied because its IRR had not yet been issued was never convincing. The law was already in force. The CLUP was still under review, endorsement, and intended implementation. These are continuing governmental acts that must comply with the law in force at the time of decision.

What the IRR Changes—and What It Confirms

The issuance of the IRR removes any remaining ambiguity. It now provides planners and reviewing agencies with concrete tools, standards, and coordination frameworks for ecosystem and natural capital accounting.

More importantly, it confirms what should have been clear from the start: that PENCAS is meant to be integrated into planning and decision-making, including CLUP review and approval. The IRR does not reset the clock. It strengthens the obligation.

For CLUPs and zoning ordinances that are still pending approval, refinement, or implementation, the path forward is now unmistakable. Compliance with PENCAS is no longer debatable—legally, administratively, or morally.

A Win for Law, Not a Loss for Development

This moment should not be framed as anti-development. On the contrary, it is a win for lawful, science-based, and future-oriented planning.

Development that ignores ecosystem value is not efficient; it is deferred cost. Flooding, landslides, water scarcity, and climate vulnerability are the downstream consequences of planning that treats nature as expendable. PENCAS simply asks us to account for what we have long taken for granted.

By issuing the IRR, DHSUD has taken a critical step toward aligning land-use planning with ecological reality. The next step is ensuring that pending and future plans—especially those governing highly urbanized and environmentally sensitive areas—are realigned accordingly.

Looking Forward

The challenge now is implementation with integrity. PENCAS should not be reduced to a box-ticking exercise or an annex buried in technical volumes. It must inform zoning decisions, constrain risky land conversions, and reshape how we define “development success.”

If this happens, then the issuance of the PENCAS IRR will not just be a bureaucratic milestone. It will be remembered as the moment when planning finally caught up with law, science, and common sense.

And that is a win worth declaring.

A Welcome Pause — But One That Exposes a Deeper Contradiction

The recent announcement of a moratorium on upland development is, at first glance, a welcome development. It signals an overdue recognition that what happens in the uplands does not remain confined there. Upland activities—slope cutting, land conversion, quarrying, and hillside construction—directly affect runoff, sedimentation, and flood risk downstream. After years of recurring floods, this acknowledgment matters.

But a pause alone is not the same as reform. And taken together with the current planning situation, the moratorium exposes a serious institutional contradiction that cannot be ignored.

At present, the Cebu City Comprehensive Land Use Plan and Zoning Ordinance (CLUP–ZO) 2023–2032 remains pending review and approval by the Department of Human Settlements and Urban Development (DHSUD). This is important. A CLUP is supposed to be the city’s definitive spatial framework—one that integrates land use, environmental constraints, hazard data, and long-term development direction.

Declaring a moratorium while allowing the CLUP to continue through the approval process sends mixed signals. On one hand, the City is saying that upland development policies, zoning ordinances, and risk assessments require comprehensive review. On the other, it is permitting a plan—prepared under those same assumptions—to move forward as if those concerns did not exist.

These two positions are institutionally inconsistent.

A moratorium is not merely a pause in permitting; it is an implicit admission that something in the existing planning framework is flawed or incomplete. Allowing the CLUP–ZO to proceed while simultaneously questioning its foundations risks locking in the very policies now being reconsidered. If the review is serious, the planning document built on those policies cannot be treated as settled.

More importantly, the value of the moratorium will depend entirely on what happens during the pause.

A meaningful review must go beyond surface-level policy checks or inventorying existing regulations. It must confront the structural causes of flooding, which did not arise overnight. This includes revisiting historical zoning amendments enacted without adequate technical studies, particularly those that incrementally intensified upland development. It also requires a cumulative assessment of upland impacts on downstream flooding, rather than treating each project or permit as an isolated case.

For decades, zoning decisions were often made in fragments—project by project, amendment by amendment—without basin-wide hydrological analysis or long-term carrying capacity studies. The downstream consequences of those decisions are now visible in flood-prone communities. Any review that fails to reckon with this history risks becoming procedural rather than corrective.

Finally, all findings from the moratorium review must be anchored to an EO 72–compliant Comprehensive Land Use Plan. Executive Order No. 72 was designed precisely to prevent piecemeal land-use decisions by requiring that zoning be subordinate to a comprehensive, technically grounded plan. Flood risk, hazard exposure, and environmental limits must be integrated at the CLUP level—not appended as afterthoughts.

If the moratorium results in a genuine reassessment of upland policies, a review of past zoning decisions, and meaningful revisions to the CLUP before it is resubmitted for approval, then the pause will have served its purpose.

If not, the moratorium risks becoming a symbolic gesture—a temporary halt that leaves the underlying planning framework unchanged, while flood risks continue to accumulate downstream.

A pause is welcome.
But integrity in planning demands consistency, accountability, and correction—not just restraint.

A Brief Context: Years of Zoning Without a Comprehensive Plan

To understand why the moratorium has become necessary, it helps to revisit how Cebu’s land-use rules evolved.

For much of the past three decades, zoning ordinances and amendments moved ahead in the absence of a fully EO 72–compliant Comprehensive Land Use Plan (CLUP). Instead of zoning being the implementing tool of a comprehensive plan, the process was effectively reversed: zoning became the primary mechanism through which land-use decisions were made.

Beginning with the 1996 Zoning Ordinance, and continuing through numerous subsequent amendments, land-use classifications were adjusted incrementally—often in response to specific proposals, developments, or economic pressures. These amendments were typically stand-alone actions, not products of basin-wide hydrological studies, cumulative flood modeling, or carrying-capacity analysis.

Over time, this resulted in:

Incremental intensification of upland and slope areas, approved project by project;
Fragmented land-use decisions, evaluated individually rather than cumulatively;
Absence of technical backup studies linking upland approvals to downstream flood risk.

Each amendment, taken alone, may have appeared manageable. But collectively, they reshaped watersheds, increased surface runoff, and weakened natural flood-regulating functions—without those impacts ever being fully measured or accounted for.

The flood overlay zones now reflected in the CLUP 2023–2032 are, in many ways, a delayed recognition of this history. They acknowledge risks that accumulated gradually through years of zoning decisions made without a unifying, science-based framework.

Seen against this backdrop, the current moratorium is not a sudden shift in policy. It is a corrective response to a long period of planning through amendments rather than through a comprehensive, EO 72–compliant CLUP.

Bringing PENCAS to Cebu: A Legal Challenge to the City’s New Land Use Plan

Environmental planner and economist Gus Agosto has taken a significant step in Cebu City’s ongoing land‑use debates by filing a formal notice and reservation of objection with the Department of Human Settlements and Urban Development (DHSUD). The notice focuses on the review of the Cebu City Comprehensive Land Use Plan (CLUP) 2023–2032 and raises an issue that has been largely absent from local public discussion: compliance with the Philippine Ecosystem and Natural Capital Accounting System (PENCAS) Act, or Republic Act No. 11995, and its Implementing Rules and Regulations.

At the heart of the filing is a simple but powerful question: can Cebu City still afford to plan growth as if its ecosystems, watersheds, and floodplains are external to the economy? For Agosto, the clear answer is no. RA 11995 declares that “natural capital” – including land, ecosystems, and the services they provide – is a measurable economic asset of the State and its political subdivisions. This is not a mere policy preference. Under PENCAS, natural capital accounting must be integrated into planning and decision‑making, particularly where long‑term land use, infrastructure, and public‑private partnerships are involved. In practice, this means a CLUP can no longer be just a map of zones and a bundle of sectoral plans; it must demonstrate how land‑use allocations respect ecological thresholds, risk patterns, and the economic value of environmental services.

The Cebu City CLUP 2023–2032, as currently framed, does many things right on paper. It outlines sectoral strategies for housing, commerce, industry, transport, and water supply. It references hazard maps and acknowledges flooding and slope risks. But, as Agosto points out, these elements remain largely compartmentalized. The plan stops short of weaving them into a cohesive, risk‑sensitive spatial strategy that clearly shows how development is constrained by carrying capacity, hazard exposure, and environmental limits. The result is a document that appears procedurally complete—boxes ticked, chapters present—but substantively misaligned with the integrated, law‑driven planning model now required under Executive Order No. 72, DHSUD’s own guidelines, and PENCAS.

This critique matters because Cebu City is not planning on a blank slate. It is a dense, highly constrained urban area, bounded by steep uplands and a vulnerable coastline, with a well‑documented history of flooding, traffic bottlenecks, and informal settlements on marginal land. In such a context, “sectoral” planning without genuine spatial integration is not a minor technical flaw; it can translate into very real, very costly risks for communities. If new commercial or residential intensities are allowed in upland or mid‑slope areas without full accounting of downstream flood impacts, the city effectively subsidizes risk—transferring the costs to low‑lying barangays that will experience deeper and more frequent inundation.

PENCAS adds another layer. By requiring natural capital accounting, RA 11995 insists that decisions about where to build, what to conserve, and how to structure public‑private partnerships must be informed by quantified assessments of ecosystem services and environmental limits. Watersheds, coastal zones, and floodplains do not merely host development; they regulate water flows, buffer storms, and sustain fisheries and livelihoods. When these are degraded or overbuilt, the “loss” is not just aesthetic or ecological—it is economic, measurable in damage to infrastructure, loss of productive days, and increased public spending on disaster response. Natural capital accounting is a way of making these hidden costs visible before, not after, decisions are taken.

Agosto’s filing is also a reminder of DHSUD’s central role in ensuring that local planning complies with national law. Executive Order No. 72 designates the CLUP as the primary basis for zoning, infrastructure provision, and land development decisions, and gives national agencies like DHSUD the responsibility to review local plans for conformity with national standards. With PENCAS already in effect, DHSUD is now expected not only to check format and basic legal compliance, but to ask whether plans show evidence of natural capital accounting: have ecosystems been valued, thresholds identified, and risks internalized into zoning and land‑use regulations? Approving a CLUP that treats PENCAS as optional would weaken the law at precisely the moment it is meant to change planning practice on the ground.

Crucially, the notice is not framed as an attempt to stop development or to delegitimize Cebu City’s efforts to adopt a long‑term land‑use plan. Instead, it positions itself as a rights‑based and policy‑grounded reminder to strengthen the CLUP. Agosto emphasizes that the objective is to align Cebu’s growth strategy with three converging realities: the legal obligations under RA 11995 and EO 72, the ecological constraints of a flood‑ and hazard‑prone city, and the long‑term public welfare of residents who will live with the consequences of today’s zoning maps and infrastructure decisions. In other words, the call is not “no development,” but “no development that pretends nature and risk do not count.”

For local stakeholders, planners, and advocates, this intervention offers a preview of what the PENCAS era will look like in practice. Formal plans, joint ventures, and big‑ticket infrastructure will increasingly be assessed not only on their financial terms and engineering feasibility, but also on whether they recognize natural capital as part of the economic equation. Cebu City’s CLUP review is an early and important test case. Whether DHSUD chooses to treat Agosto’s filing as a technical annoyance or as an opportunity to put PENCAS into meaningful operation will say much about the future of urban planning and environmental governance in the Philippines.

Environmental Rights Are Human Rights: Why Cebu Must Defend Its Constitutional Right to a Balanced and Healthful Ecology

HUMAN RIGHTS DAY MESSAGE

Today, the world commemorates International Human Rights Day, marking the anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

But in Cebu, this day carries a deeper, more urgent meaning. In our island—where critical watersheds are shrinking, fragile slopes are carved for profit, rivers are choked with silt, and communities drown in entirely preventable floods—one fundamental human right is under unprecedented threat:

The Right to a Balanced and Healthful Ecology.

This is not a political slogan or an aspirational ideal. It is a constitutional mandate, enshrined in Article II, Section 16 of the 1987 Philippine Constitution:

“The State shall protect and advance the right of the people to a balanced and healthful ecology in accord with the rhythm and harmony of nature.”

This right is further affirmed by the Supreme Court in the landmark case of Oposa v. Factoran (1993), which established that environmental rights are intergenerational, enforceable in court, and impose a mandatory duty on all government officials to protect the environment for present and future generations.

I. Environmental Neglect is a Human Rights Violation

Human Rights are not solely civil and political; they are inextricably environmental, social, and economic.

Cebuanos cannot fully enjoy their right to life, security, livelihood, or safe housing if their communities are systematically placed in harm’s way by governance failures, including:

Scientifically unsound land-use decisions.
Approval of upland developments in known hazard-prone areas.
Zoning ordinances that ignore hydrological and watershed limits.
Failure to integrate mandatory hazard maps and natural capital accounting.
Non-compliance with national laws such as RA 11995 (PENCAS) and RA 11038 (E-NIPAS).

When a city tolerates policies that exacerbate climate risks and disaster intensity, the resulting flooding and landslides cease to be “natural disasters.” They become human rights violations caused by official negligence, abuse of authority, and systemic disregard for public safety.

The government, by transferring disaster risk from developers and decision-makers onto the most vulnerable communities, violates the people’s constitutional right to: Health, Security, Safety, Due Process, Life, and Environmental Equity.

II. The Human Cost of Environmental Injustice in Cebu

Recent disasters, such as the flash floods caused by Typhoon Tino and similar weather events, tragically revealed the truth Cebuanos have felt for years: Catastrophic flooding is not inevitable. It is the direct consequence of human decisions—of upland reclassification, politically influenced zoning, weak enforcement, and the dangerous disregard for the island’s carrying capacity.

In areas like Bacayan, Mananga, Compostela, and Subangdaku, lives have been lost, homes destroyed, and families displaced. These are not isolated tragedies. They are symptoms of a profound governance failure, violating both the tenets of environmental protection and the principles of social justice.

III. Accountability Mandated by Law: The PENCAS Defect

The law requires more from our leaders, particularly following the enactment of the Philippine Ecosystem and Natural Capital Accounting System Act (RA 11995).

PENCAS, effective in May 2024, made it mandatory for all government units to:

Integrate natural capital valuation in all planning.
Consider ecological thresholds before approving developments.
Quantify environmental losses and risks to protect critical ecosystems.

However, the recently approved Cebu City CLUP and Zoning Ordinance 2025—passed after PENCAS took effect—demonstrates an alarming failure to integrate these mandatory principles.

This is not only a profound legal defect but, more importantly, a human rights crisis. When planning willfully ignores ecological science and mandatory laws, the people ultimately pay the price with their lives, homes, and livelihoods.

IV. Environmental Justice is Human Rights Justice

The Constitution demands “harmony with nature.” Conversely, our current planning trajectory is in direct conflict with nature.

Scientific data consistently shows that the uplands contribute 55–60% of Cebu’s floodwater runoff. Yet, land-use decisions continue to open these crucial slopes and midlands to:

Excessive reclassification and rezoning.
Expansive subdivisions and commercial sprawl.
Aggressive road cuts and quarrying.

This pattern is not development; it is risk accumulation. Every time a watershed is weakened, a slope is destabilized, or a flood basin is paved over, we fundamentally undermine the people’s rights to safety and a sustainable future.

Environmental Justice demands that:

Those who benefit from development must not be allowed to inflict harm on those downstream.
Government decisions must be based on science and must not endanger the public they swore to protect.
Vulnerable communities must not be sacrificed for private gain and political expediency.

V. A Call for Action and Accountability

On this International Human Rights Day, we stand together to assert that:

Flood safety is a Human Right.
Compliance with environmental law (RA 11995) is a mandatory duty.
Hazard-informed planning is a legal requirement.
No zoning ordinance should contradict science, and no public official has the authority to gamble with ecological security.

We assert our right to demand accountability, transparency, correction of defective plans, and the unwavering protection of our uplands and watersheds.

We look forward to A Cebu That Honors Human Rights: a city built on the right to safe communities, flood resilience, and ecological integrity.

Environmental Rights ARE Human Rights. Justice for Cebu.

CLUP/ZO SERIES – PART 1

Why Cebu City’s Housing Plan Cannot Work: A Critical Look at the CLUP’s Most Serious Weakness

This article begins my multi-part series on Cebu City’s new Comprehensive Land Use Plan (CLUP) and Zoning Ordinance (ZO).
Over the next few weeks, we will look closely at what this plan gets right, what it gets wrong, and how its flaws shape Cebu’s future — for better or for worse.

We begin with the sector that affects all others: HOUSING.

Because where people live determines how they move, how they work, how communities grow, and ultimately whether a city becomes livable — or collapses under its own weight.

And right now, Cebu City’s housing plan is on the wrong path.

The Huge Gap Between Housing Needs and Housing Reality

The City estimates that 865,725 housing units are needed to address the backlog and future demand.
To accommodate that number, the CLUP calculates that Cebu City would need 15,169 hectares of additional residential land.

But here is the problem:

Cebu City does not have 15,169 hectares of buildable land.

It doesn’t even come close.

Cebu is not a flat province like Cavite or Laguna.
It is a mountain city with narrow slopes, rivers, steep terrain, coastal hazards, and protected watersheds.

Only about 25–30% of Cebu’s total land is actually suitable for safe residential development.

In other words:

The very formula used to compute Cebu’s housing demand does not fit Cebu’s geography.

It’s like measuring a mountain with a ruler designed for plains.

And because the method is wrong, the strategies that follow also fall apart.

So Where Will Cebu Build? The CLUP’s Answer: SRP

Because Cebu lacks large, flat, safe tracts of land, the CLUP turns almost entirely to the South Road Properties (SRP) — a reclaimed area exposed to storm surge, subsidence, and liquefaction — as the primary relocation site for the urban poor.

The City actually owns 313 hectares of land across 211 parcels.
But a massive 240 hectares (76%) of this land is in SRP.

This explains the CLUP’s insistence on building:

Temporary housing in SRP
Permanent high-rise housing in SRP
Social housing clusters in SRP

SRP is the easiest to access politically.
But it is also one of the most dangerous places to house the poor.

Relocating families from riverbanks and hazard zones only to place them in a coastal hazard zone is not progress — it is risk transfer.

It moves people out of danger… and into another kind of danger.

The “Permanent Housing” Plan Is Even Harder to Believe

The CLUP describes an ambitious “South Coastal Urban Development” (SCUD) project:

5-storey, 10-storey, and 20-storey MRBs
Long-term leases “like Singapore”
Thousands of families relocated to high-density towers

But the proposed site is still underwater.
The land does not exist yet — it must be reclaimed first.

Even if the concept is good, the location and timing are not.

It will take years before the land is ready.
And billions upon billions before the buildings rise.

Which brings us to another uncomfortable truth.

The CLUP Claims ₱26 Billion Per Year for Housing — Cebu’s Budget Is Only ₱13 Billion

The CLUP states that the City is allocating ₱26 billion annually for MRB construction.

But Cebu City’s entire 2026 budget is only ₱13 billion.

Meaning:

The housing plan requires twice the city’s entire budget
No one knows where the money will come from
No financing model, PPP structure, or national commitment is presented

It is a beautiful idea with no financial backbone.

Housing towers may be drawn on paper,
but they cannot be built with numbers that do not exist.

So Why Not Use the City’s Other Land?

Outside SRP, the City owns:

66.37 hectares

Used for schools, barangay halls, and urban poor housing.

These areas could be transformed into strategic mid-rise communities connected to jobs and transport.
But the CLUP does not propose land consolidation, urban regeneration, or vertical redevelopment.