LOOK: When a city loses its shade

MANILA, Philippines — In a city that grows hotter by the day, trees are not ornaments. They are shelter.

Along Quirino Avenue in Manila, that shelter is being cut down, one trunk at a time. What once stood as a line of mature trees with wide canopies now lies in pieces — stumps, roots, sawdust and slabs of freshly cut wood under the punishing sun.

Workers rushed to clear tree stumps left from more than 200 trees felled Thursday to give way to the Southern Access Link Expressway, or SALEx, a nearly four-kilometer road project that will connect Skyway to Roxas Boulevard. The operation is covered by a permit issued by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, which allows the removal of 617 trees for the project.

The DENR said 225 trees had already cut down as of Tuesday night. Among them was a narra tree estimated to be more than 50 years old, according to the DENR National Capital Region.

The scene is stark: a chainsaw biting into a thick stump; wood chips scattering across the sidewalk; workers lifting heavy sections of trunk; traffic moving past what remains of trees that had shaded pedestrians, commuters and motorists for decades.

In Metro Manila, trees serve a purpose far beyond beauty. They cool streets, soften the heat trapped by concrete and asphalt, absorb pollutants, reduce flooding by helping the ground take in rainwater, and provide small but vital pockets of relief in a dense urban landscape.

For pedestrians waiting at crossings, commuters walking to terminals, vendors working by the roadside, and residents enduring worsening heat, a tree canopy can mean the difference between bearable and brutal.

That is why the loss of mature trees is felt immediately. Seedlings may be planted, but they cannot quickly replace the shade, cooling effect and ecological value of trees that had taken decades to grow.

The DENR said the project proponent is required to plant 50,700 seedlings within Manila in the next planting season as a condition of the permit. Planting sites will be determined in coordination with the local government, it said, to ensure ecological benefits to the area.

Still, the images from Quirino Avenue capture the difficult trade-off facing fast-growing cities: roads promise mobility and development, while trees quietly provide the basic defenses that make urban life more livable.

For now, Quirino Avenue bears the evidence of what has been lost: exposed roots, severed trunks and a sidewalk stripped of shade. In their place is a question Manila can no longer avoid: How much more of its natural defenses can the city give up in the name of development? /dm