WE spent our nation’s 128th Independence Day anniversary among the carved balustrades and capiz windows of the old casas at the Las Casas de Acusar in Quezon City.
Casas like Monroy, Arroyave and Boix are repositories of skill, memory and material culture: hardwood joinery, woven floorboards, clay tiles, capiz panes, artisanal ironwork and techniques passed down through generations. Each beam is a ledger of lives lived and choices made. Each roofline is a classroom in vernacular responses to heat, rain and typhoon winds. Our Independence Day celebration under their eaves was a tangible continuity, an inheritance that climate change now puts on the line.
International heritage bodies have been clear: climate change is one of the greatest, fastest‑growing threats to cultural property worldwide. Rising seas, frequent and intense storms, changing humidity regimes, flooding and shifting ecological pests accelerate the buildings’ decay and make traditional materials more vulnerable. Protecting heritage demands climate‑aware planning, not just conservation for its own sake.
The stakes are immediate for the Philippines. Scientific assessments and national agencies show stronger cyclones, heavier rainfall, accelerated sea‑level rise and extreme weather as central near‑term risks, conditions that damage low‑lying coastal towns, historic districts and wooden houses built before modern engineering standards.
What does this mean for century‑old casas? First, traditional materials like untreated hardwoods and lime mortars are highly sensitive to moisture fluctuation and salt exposure. Second, because the craftsmen who know how to repair them are aging, their skills are vulnerable unless actively transmitted and funded. Third, many historic houses sit on plots that lack formal protection or adaptation funding; the cost of retrofitting like elevating foundations and using compatible weather‑resistant treatments is out of reach for ordinary owners and small local government units (LGUs). Unchecked, these pressures turn living heritage into ruins and memory into a footnote.
Toolkit for preservation
Preservation in the era of climate collapse requires an expanded toolkit blending traditional conservation with climate adaptation and community empowerment.
Launch community‑led surveys to map and condition‑report casas. Prioritize immediate repairs like roofing and termite control that reduce exposure to extreme weather. Use low‑carbon, heritage‑compatible materials and reversible interventions to keep the house’s character intact
Support apprenticeship programs like public grants or heritage tourism rebates that keep joinery, nipa‑thatch weaving and masonry skills alive. Funding and structured training will ensure craftspeople can transmit knowledge to the next generation.
Work with LGUs to include heritage houses in their Local Climate Change Action Plans. Integrate stormwater upgrades, manage retreats where necessary and perform flood‑proofing schemes tailored to traditional structures, making adaptation measures practical and culturally sensitive.
Push for municipal ordinances that protect historic houses. Create tax incentives, microgrant programs for maintenance and insurance products adapted for owners of heritage properties to make upkeep financially viable for ordinary families.
Build alliances between heritage custodians, climate scientists, engineers and cultural agencies to access technical guidance and funding. To amplify impact, reach out to national bodies like the National Historical Commission of the Philippines and the National Commission on Culture and the Arts, which maintain registries and programs that support documentation, grants and local networks.
This goes beyond preserving old houses for tourists. It’s about sustaining local identity, livelihoods and resilience. A maintained casa can host community events, house small enterprises, teach younger generations traditional crafts and anchor adaptive land‑use that reduces displacement during storms. Conversely, neglecting heritage weakens social cohesion at the very moment communities need strong social capital to respond to disasters.
That afternoon, under carved eaves, I felt joy for what has survived centuries of change and urgency because the next decades will be decisive. In valuing our casas as more than museum pieces, we must treat them as critical infrastructure: fragile, precious, reparable, and deserving of public investment and civic devotion.
My call to action is simple: start locally, act now. Encourage your barangay or city to inventory its century‑old houses. Ask your LGU to include heritage in climate adaptation budgets. Support apprenticeship workshops and volunteer on documentation drives. In visiting a casa, ask about its maintenance plan and lend your voice to protect it.
Heritage is an urgent front line of climate action and inseparable from it. Failure to shore up our casas will cause us to lose not only wood and stone but the stories, skills and civic anchors binding us together. Acting now can model a different future, where climate resilience and cultural continuity walk forward together.
The author is the founder and chief strategic advisor of the Young Environmental Forum and a subject-matter expert at the Co-operative College of the Philippines. He completed a climate change and development course at the University of East Anglia (UK) and an executive program on sustainability leadership at Yale University (USA). Email him at [email protected].