Environmental Groups: Clean-ups are Not Enough!
Today, September 21, is the International Coastal Clean-up Day (ICCD) when thousands of volunteers gathered to clean-up the coasts of Manila Bay. The ICCD, which is celebrated every third Saturday of September, is a yearly global event that mobilizes one of the largest volunteer efforts to clean shorelines, seabed and inland waterways. This year, the Las Pinas-Paranaque Critical Habitat and Ecotourism Area (LPPCHEA) and the coastline of Roxas Boulevard were selected as the sites for the event.
Some environmental groups, however, believe that coastal clean-ups are not enough to save the environment from its major threats. According to Trixie Concepcion of Earth Island Institute (EII), their group has been doing coastal clean-up campaigns in the LPPCHEA since 2011 but the trash keeps on coming back. Concepcion notes that until the root-causes of the garbage problem such as the chaotic and wasteful consumerist system, apathy and the government’s lack of political will to rehabilitate the environment are addressed, environmental depletion and pollution will just continue.
Worse than marine pollution is the impending reclamation project in Manila Bay that would not only cause irreversible damage to the marine ecosystem but would also displace livelihoods of fisherfolk communities in the area according to Glacy Macabale of Save Freedom Island Movement (SFIM).
The LPPCHEA, which comprises Freedom Island and Long Island, has been the subject of the controversial P14 Billion reclamation project. This “resurrected PEA-Amari deal: the Mother of all Scams” was voided by the Supreme Court in November 11, 2003, but the Philippine Reclamation Authority (PRA) still plans to reclaim 635 hectares of the shoreline in front of the islands.
Said area is a bird sanctuary and the last remaining mangrove frontier in Metro Manila which was declared as a critical habitat by Proclamation 1412 in 2007. It was also recently included in the Ramsar List of Wetlands of International Importance because its rich mangrove ecosystem serves as a feeding, nesting and nursery grounds for commercially important fish, prawns, mollusks, crabs and shellfish where local and migratory birds feed in and where livelihoods of coastal communities depend at.
“The urban poor communities along shorelines and waterways were usually blamed for polluting the waters while the damages caused by big industries and the government, per se, were often missed out by so-called ‘environmental’ groups. Such government agencies that favor reclamation and industries responsible in poisoning our water and air guise themselves as ‘green’ and even join coastal clean-up drives yet refuse to change their ecologically destructive ways,” Macabale explained.
The EII and SFIM encourage people to see the bigger economic and political picture beyond trash and move to the next level. Aside from betraying the public trust through collaborating with corporations who are accountable for destroying the environment, the groups note that public funds that should have been allotted for the environment and for other social services are being used by politicians for their private interests.
“There’s also trash in the bureaucracy that we must clean up,” Concepcion said.
The groups clarify that there is nothing wrong with coastal clean-ups. It is, in fact, a gesture that people do care about environmental conservation and an effective way of spreading awareness to more people, they added.
EII and SFIM are optimistic that the ICCD would serve as a call to all citizens, as well as to the government, to act upon the garbage problem and to rechannel funds for the environment and other social services. Though they are aware that it would be unrealistic to hope that the one-day coastal clean-up would solve the continued pollution and contamination of Manila Bay, they dare hope that the seas and rivers would be gradually revived to their former clean and pristine condition because of the awareness that the campaign brings. ########
