After cleaning up Boracay, the government is training its sights on Manila Bay. It’s tempting to scoff at this ambitious objective. The bay is where the country’s largest and busiest seaport is located. Around the bay are numerous informal settlements where people treat the sea as their garbage dump and sewerage system.
The charcoal-making community described by author Dan Brown in his novel “Inferno” as the “gates of Hell” is located in Manila’s port district. Industrial waste is also dumped into the bay from factories, including toxic waste from fireworks plants in Bulacan. Garbage and effluvia from polluted creeks also end up in the bay.
Cleaning up the bay, however, isn’t as quixotic as it seems. Environmental advocates, backed by political and private sector support, have succeeded in cleaning up the Pasig River. Despite winning international recognition, the river cleanup is far from finished. But it shows that rehabilitating polluted waters is possible.
Several countries have also shown that it is possible to revive heavily polluted bodies of water. While funding is important in this effort, the most critical component for success is sustained public cooperation.
Private companies must be persuaded that investments in environment-friendly technology, equipment and materials, although initially expensive, can prove cost-effective in the long run. Residential communities must see the advantages of a clean bay to their health, quality of life and – for fishing villages – their livelihoods.
Reviving the bay should also include putting a stop to reclamation projects for commercial and other purposes. The bay needs to breathe if it is to be revived, and this becomes more difficult if it keeps getting artificially smaller. Fishponds must be limited. The Las Piñas-Parañaque Critical Habitat and Eco-Tourism Area, which has been officially declared as a protected wetland, must be nurtured and even expanded.
The presence of that protected wetland right inside Metro Manila should encourage proponents of the bay cleanup that their campaign can achieve some measure of success. As the Pasig River revival has shown, the objective is best attained if everyone is on board.