Environmental suicide

It would seem that, while we were quarantining and then busy looking for onions, some people have been very, very busy dredging and quarrying and filling in Manila Bay in relentless reclamation efforts.

The photos of the landscaped garden and pool area of the Philippine Plaza hotel now looking out onto a grayish mass of land posted in a viber group I belong to gave me a real shock. I even thought these could be fake photos until I Google’d it and found out that it’s very real indeed. In the last few years we have lost quite a bit of our beloved bay.

It seems there are up to 25 reclamation projects in Manila Bay, from Navotas all the way to Cavite, seeking to reclaim some 10,000 hectares. Actually, reclaim is the wrong term, since these projects are claiming, taking areas from the bay, and not re-claiming or seeking to recover what was previously lost.

Semantics aside, what are we doing? Grabbing land from the sea to do what? Build more casinos, hotels, condos, malls? How will all these projects – imagine, 25 of them! – impact the existing cities in terms of flooding, climate and the environment? Did the government – local and/or national – give permits for all these projects? This is not progress or development; this is greed and environmental suicide. – Benjamin John Tan, Parañaque City