THE Environment Department on Monday
urged the government to stop selling land in Baguio City and Boracay
temporarily to stop their further degradation.
“The government can only promote
public welfare on land that it owns,” Environment Secretary Ramon Paje said.
“Once sold to the private sector, we
cannot dictate… we can only tell [the buyer] how to mitigate [the impact of
development on the environment].”
Paje cited the case of the
government-owned Camp John Hay in Baguio City, where his department has issued
an order stopping the cutting of more than 1,000 trees for construction
purposes.
“We can only implement decisions on
government property,” Paje said.
“In Baguio, the biggest land owner is
still the government, so we can still mitigate and make decisions that will
promote public welfare.”
Paje said the government still owned
Boracay based on a Supreme Court ruling, but that would lapse by 2016. Until then,
the government would have the opportunity to “correct and plan for a more
sustainable development of the island.”
He said President Benigno Aquino III
ordered the Environment, Justice, Interior and Tourism Departments to study the
carrying capacities of Baguio City and Boracay and to look into the cases of
“over-building” in those areas.
Carrying capacity refers to how much
load—population and infrastructure—an area can take over a given period without
adversely affecting the environment. Environmentalists, for instance, have
pointed out how the bat population in Boracay has dwindled because the bats are
being disturbed.
Paje said the President’s order was to
ensure that the issues confronting Baguio and Boracay would not be repeated in
other tourism sites. He said the government had identified 78 such sites that
were approved by the National Tourism Council.
Those sites include Panglao Island in
Bohol, Coron Island in Palawan, and in the Puerto Princesa Underground River,
which has been experiencing a dramatic increase in tourist arrivals since its
proclamation as one of the New 7 Wonders of Nature.
(Published in the Manila Standard
Today newspaper on /2012/April/24)
__________________________________________________________
