Together with the Koalisyon Kontra Kumbersyon ng Manila Bay (KKK-Manila Bay), Pamalakaya expressed skepticism about the plan to develop artificial mangrove areas which are also promised to provide jobs to small fishers and residents of coastal towns, noting that several projects that will lead to massive destruction of mangrove areas are already in the pipeline.
Pamalakaya and KKK-Manila Bay have been calling on the Aquino administration to junk all reclamation projects being worked out by concerned government agencies, such as the Philippine Reclamation Authority (PRA), which has been promoting the massive reclamation of coastal areas that will lead to the massive destruction of existing mangrove areas, instead of protecting them from destructive human activities.
“The public-private partnership [PPP] development blue print of the Aquino administration promotes the destruction of mangrove areas through reclamation and conversion as seen in the previous and current experiences of Manila Bay, Laguna Lake, Cebu, Panglao in Bohol and in Boracay in Aklan. Now President Aquino wants to develop artificial mangrove areas while destroying the original ones to pave way for PPP projects. What kind of a policy is this?” Pamalakaya National chairman and KKK-Manila Bay Convener Fernando Hicap said in a press statement.
Hicap was referring to the mangrove reforestation program earlier announced by Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) Director Asis Perez.
According to the BFAR official, a total of P237.5 million was allocated to build new mangrove areas and fish farms for mangroves.
The project, according to Perez, will directly benefit fishers and their families, create more jobs, and result in improving and protecting aquatic resources, adding that the mangrove project is in response to the current situation where the country’s mangrove hectarage has drastically declined over the years due to neglect and the development of coastal communities.
The Department of Agriculture-BFAR’s reforestation program is aimed at rehabilitating the country’s mangrove cover, which shrunk by more than 80 percent from its pristine state of half a billion hectares in the early 1900s.
Aside from helping preserve the marine environment, mangroves also protect coastal communities against typhoon surges and tsunamis. They also prevent soil erosion and trap carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from the atmosphere to mitigate global warming.
The BFAR targets the planting of 100 million mangrove propagules or mangrove shoots in the next three years. Hicap, however, maintained that the policy, program and politics of reclamation and conversion of coastal communities and mangrove areas into industrial and commercial hubs and ecotourism enclaves over the last 50 years tells a different a story.
He lamented that in Manila Bay, no less than 20,000 hectares of Manila Bay waters had been reclaimed over the last 30 to 40 years to give way to special economic zone projects in Bataan and Cavite, the commercial spaces occupied by the Manila Film Center, the GSIS building in Pasay City, the Cultural Center of the Philippines and the Folk Arts Theater in Manila, the SM Mall of Asia, and other commercial companies in Pasay City and Parañaque City.
The group said in 1992-95, some 3,500 small fisherfolk and their families in the Pasay Reclamation Area and another 3,000 coastal and urban poor families along the coastal shores of Parañaque were evicted by the government of former President Fidel Ramos to give way to reclamation projects that are now home to commercial buildings in the area. J.L. Mayuga
Pamalakaya said in 2006, the national government through the Philippine Reclamation Authority (PRA) and its contractor partner UEM-Mara Philippine Corp. reclaimed an additional 7,500 hectares of coastal waters off Manila Bay for the now built R-1 Expressway Extension Project, which was annexed to the Manila-Cavite Coastal Road Project.
On June 21, 2007, then President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo signed Executive Order No. 629 directing the PRA to develop Sangley Point in Cavite City into a logistical hub with modern seaport and an airport, citing the R-1 expressway extension project as enabling component.
Pamalakaya said the PRA has plans to reclaim 5,000 hectares of coastal waters in Cavite City to expand Sangley Port as follow up to the R-1 Expressway Extension Project. The group said the PRA is bent to reclaim the 175- hectare bird sanctuary and mangrove forest along the coastline of Manila Bay also known as the Las Pinas-Paranaque coastal lagoon to pave the way for a business project center.
The reclamation project in the Las Pinas-Paranaque coastal lagoon will also entail the reclamation of 635 more hectares of coastal waters adjacent to Las Pinas-Paranaque coastal lagoon.
Elsewhere in Navotas, the national government is wants to push the North Bay Blvd. Project (NBBP) in Navotas City that will entail the reclamation of no less than 5,000 hectares of foreshore lands to the detriment of more than 20,000 fishing and urban poor families who will be immediately displaced once this national project proceeds.
(Jonathan L. Mayuga)
