As reclamation activities in Manila Bay were put on hold, giving the country’s engineers and marine scientists the time they should’ve been given beforehand, to study and design coastal engineering solutions that could mitigate its adverse impacts, experts advocating for such policies stressed, as they pointed to an urgent need to improve the country’s coastal management policies amid threats of reclamation and rapid urban development.
Philippine Council for Industry, Energy and Emerging Technology Research and Development (PCIEERD) head Enrico Paringit and University of the Philippines geologist Fernando Siringan said it includes, among others, designing proper interventions that could protect coastal communities from erosion and flooding; and studying how projects like dump-and-fills affect coastal areas like Manila Bay.
“We do not really exclude the possibility that these developments might even work for us, especially since we’re constrained in terms of resources,” Paringit said. “But we need to take a look at scientific merits of having them constructed, what are their pros and cons, what can make it successful and what could threaten it, what are its unintended consequences,” he added.
So “until such time that you have a clear idea of what is being lost and whether it can be recovered, or whether technology can be used to minimize impacts, then it’s only right that we wait first,” Siringan noted.
Advocates consider Manila Bay as the poster child of coastal management challenges, with reclamation and seabed mining drastically changing its landscape and ecosystems. However, “what is happening in Manila is happening across the country,” Paringit said, as sea level rise and coastal erosion happen at varying degrees.
At least 60 percent of the country’s population live in coastal communities, leaving them vulnerable to these climate change-related impacts, which could be exacerbated by activities like reclamation, especially if only the bare minimum requirements are met and whatever impact studies that are conducted are biased towards the developers.
Perhaps it is time that national government and local government units take such proposals and activities more seriously, giving more weight to future impacts, especially with climate change in mind. In in the past only capitalists were heavy involved in reclamation projects, it is time we bring in the scientists as well, because long term impacts on the environment and community always trumps short term profit.*
