Should Baguio be rehabilitated, the way Boracay was, the way Manila Bay is going through now?
These past several weeks now, the question has been raised — and rightly so — considering how much degraded our natural environment has been these many years now. That the national government has taken good notice of Baguio’s environmental condition is just in order and plain overdue.
No less than PRRD himself has expressed strong dislike over Baguio’s deteriorated environment, mincing in so many words that if we locals don’t get our act together, we’d be next in his hit list of places to oversee for long overdue rehabilitation. Let us recall that at about this time last year, when Boracay’s condition was still being publicly berated, to the chagrin of the locals in our pride of place down south, we were already speculating that if the world-famous beach resort would go through what it had to beginning May, 2018, then it’s just a matter of time that Baguio would be next.
Just towards the year-end, amid the season’s revelry and merriment, Cabinet officials have voiced out PRRD’s outbursts, though in less worrisome way, and minus the usual expletives. We surmised then that indeed, time is running out before the Presidential axe swings our way, before the strong-arm of government would come hammer and tongs to give the country’s Summer Capital the proverbial shot in the arm.
Shutting down Baguio however may not work this time, the way it did in Boracay. For one thing, a shutdown would mean prohibiting access by land and air, and doing just that may pose unsound travel restrictions and enforcement difficulties when barring anyone wishing to come up, anytime at all. If the shutdown means preventing tourists, local and foreign alike, from Baguio access, would that mean getting every vehicle bound for Baguio inspected, every passenger examined if tourists or residents along the way? What about people coming up here for studies or for commercial business purposes?
If shutdown is a nightmarish proposition, would the vaunted Baguio rehabilitation take another option? Here’s where we need to first identify just what would the rehabilitation process strive to accomplish, say in 6 months’ time beginning perhaps in May this year. Getting to brass tacks, to plain and simple specifics, will help us go through the muddle, rather than getting head-on with something that may not even require a Boracay shutdown — tremendous loss of income for key stakeholders in tourism, business, education as a result of economic disruption, no matter how temporary. Any one man’s loss is every man’s loss after all.
Last heard from DENR, we are told that Baguio’s carrying capacity has already gone beyond allowable limits, necessitating the establishment of No Build Zones must in places where too much vertical infrastructure buildings have been allowed, to the detriment of public welfare and safety. Simply stated, it means that Baguio’s mountainous terrain has lost much of its forested and vegetative cover in favor of housing settlements, reason why residents in these places are vulnerable to landslides that occur at the slightest hint of heavy inundating rains.
This is where we have to contend with the reality on the ground, something that horrifies residents, long-time or otherwise, who have acquired titled properties on housing settlement areas which government itself has long ordained to be of such status. To protect them, is DENR saying that they must be re-settled in areas safer than where they are? At whose expense if they agree? And if they don’t will they be forcibly taken out, in the way that informal settlers have historically been?
That said, it’s always easy to put in writing what must be done by way of strategic planning. Piece of cake, any land planner will say. All it takes is some mental calisthenics on planning to pin down specific courses of action to achieve stated goals and voila, here’s the plan of action. Little do our government bureaucrats know that going that route is without even the least regard, or much more due recognition of on-the-ground realities that happen when persons and communities are adversely affected by government plans, when certain rights are thumbed down in favour of state-invoked rights.
This is just one aspect of rehabilitation that needs to be calibrated, where we locals — our policy planners and implementors, civil society, environmental advocates — would really need to get our act together and to get these realities-on-the-ground brought to national government for a common consensus. Public policies are after all meant to be well-explained, much more so when these are even now spawning growing anxieties. Local voices must be heard, and heeded reasonably, for the entire process to serve truly the public interest.
Otherwise, the rehabilitation that Baguio needs may just be cosmetic and therefore illusory. The need is for our environment to replenish what may have been lost, to nurture what can be quickly restored, to regenerate what can grow, without having to cause needless loss to anyone. Valor without prudence is merely bravado.
