The price of urbanization

The World Bank recently released its study “Economic Impacts of Sanitation in the Philippines”. The report shows findings of poor sanitation in the Philippines which costs the government a staggering P77.8 billion a year. Furthermore, this results to 31 premature deaths a day and reduces income from fishery, tourism and other sectors. And healthcare costs account for 71 percent of the total losses due to 38 million cases of diarrhea per year.

The thing is, poor sanitation seems to be a natural consequence of the escalating urbanization and overpopulation in Metro Manila and some provincial cities. The present image of the city is a far cry from the kind of city that was envisioned way back in 1905 under the Philippines’ first civilian governor-general, Judge William Howard Taft when the population was only 800,000. He thought that the capital should be a planned town that is beautiful and functional at the same time. He hired as his architect and city planner Daniel Hudson Burnham, who had then built Union Station and the post office in Washington, and in Baguio City, what we  now know as Burnham Park. In Manila, Mr. Burnham had in mind a long wide, tree-lined boulevard along the bay, beginning at a park area dominated by a magnificent hotel, what we now know as the Manila Hotel. This part of the city is still beautiful now, but other areas of the metropolis wreak with dirt and poor sanitation, with pockets of old, decrepit houses with unkempt yards, esteros, shanties, slum areas, littered corners, piles of garbage and dirty canals and waterways. Even the air smells dirty, with smog coming from the smoke belched by worn out vehicles and lesser trees to refresh the air a bit.

Poor sanitation results from overcrowded areas with limited water supply and the  absence of drainage and sewerage and disposal facilities. The problem is compounded with a growing population, which now stands at 12 million and is expected to double seven years from now. More and more people from the rural areas are drawn to the cities to look for better opportunities. As cities become more dense, they also become unsustainable cities where environmental threats and social and economic distress become concentrated.

Another cause for alarm is the dirt and sludge in our rivers and waterways, where slum residents lining the river banks dump their waste. Recently, two rivers in Bulacan were named among the 30 dirtiest rivers in the world by a New York-based environmental group. The Blacksmith study blames the indiscriminate dumping of industrial waste into the Marilao-Meycauayan river system. A DENR study published two years ago said that 70%-75% of Philippine rivers are biologically dead, citing Pasig River as among the casualties and the continuous deterioration of the Laguna de Bay, where marine life is slowly being exterminated. Even the Manila Bay is not saved from pollution and garbage.

The government is already spending millions of pesos to solve all these problems, but unless we as a people become solution-oriented, rather than blaming others for our miseries, our children and their children may have to live in a dirty and polluted world, where there is no clean water and air to breathe. We all better start cleaning our own backyard first and contribute something to make our country a cleaner and a better place to live in.