- Published on Tuesday, 20 November 2012 18:58
- Written by Lito U. Gagni / Market Files
‘I
AM Cynthia Villar, and I say no to reclamation,” she thundered before a
“People’s Summit on the Impacts of Reclamation” at the University of
the Philippines last month and there is no denying this is the advocacy
that will reverberate all over the archipelago in the coming months.
Villar is serving
notice that urban renewal should be the new mantra—not the reclamation
that threatens the flooding of thousands of homes. And here, she walks
the talk. For on October 12 she took the witness stand before the courts
as she tried to marshal the argument that reclamation should not be
allowed in a stretch of Manila Bay as the cost and benefit do not tally.
She has already won a writ of kalikasan against the project and now
wants a temporary environmental protection order (Tepo) that would stop
it completely.
Standing tall on her
conviction that a planned 635-hectare reclamation project on Manila Bay
could economically affect residents of Las Piñas, Parañaque and parts of
Cavite, Villar spewed out the cold logic of the numbers. The
reclamation would “flood” the economic well-being of the residents of
these three cities, as the project would “impede the natural river flow
in Las Piñas.”
She said Las Piñas,
which has 4,000 hectares, or 40 million square meters, would not benefit
from the planned reclamation that could add another 500 hectares, or 5
million square meters. The additional hectarage does not at all result
in increased economic benefits and would even worsen the economic
picture for the residents. The damage to flooding “massively outweighs
any benefits from the additional land,” said Villar.
Doing the math, Villar
said that assuming the cost of the land in Las Piñas is P5,000 per
square meter, and the flooding caused by the reclamation would decrease
property values by 10 percent, the P200-billion value of the land would
go down by P20 billion, which far outweighs the P14 billion worth of
reclaimed land. That is how skewed the cost-benefit ratio is, much like
the fact that the reclamation proponent, All Tech Contractors Inc., is
doing the huge project on a P50-million capital.
And what about the
recurring damage? Villar vows: “We will stand firm in our stance against
this reclamation, since the Constitution itself guarantees our right to
a healthy environment.” What she proposes instead is urban renewal,
where old buildings are rebuilt, whole blocks redesigned without any
disruption to the ecological balance.
The Las
Piñas-Parañaque-Cavite ecosystem is threatened by the reclamation
project, as it would not only affect the flow of the Las Piñas River but
even destroy the remaining 175-hectare mangrove forest and habitat that
is home to bird species unique to the country. Citing an independent
hydrologist, Tricore Solutions Inc., Villar is pushing for the Tepo
since an “Ondoy”-like flooding would sink villages in the three affected
areas by 0.15 meters and as much as 5.12 meters, equivalent to a
two-story building.
Aside from this, a
livelihood project that Villar conceptualized and which now employs
thousands of poor folk along the banks of the Las Piñas River would be
affected. What the residents do is collect the waste and water hyacinths
along the river system and turn them into works of art that the Villar
Foundation then markets and distributes.
Villar’s project, that
of educating the Las Piñas residents to weave bags and their dreams to
make their lives better, has actually caught fire in a nook along the
river system in Pateros, the only remaining municipality in Metro
Manila. In this town known for balut and alpombra sandals, a resident on
M.R. Flores Street in Santo Rosario Kanluran wants to transplant the
Villar livelihood advocacy.
This advocacy for
ecological balance and aligned with it, that of providing livelihood
opportunities, proves that Mrs. Villar is her own man, so to speak; in
walking her talk, she is also doing an extraordinary task of weaving a
new paradigm in urban renewal while providing a better future for
less-fortunate folk not only in her native Las Piñas but also in 102
government reclamation projects being planned.
That is what makes this former Las Piñas congresswoman a different breed of leader.
No comments:
Post a Comment