A passport for destruction of Manila Bay. This is how Manila Bay based groups Pambansang Lakas ng Kilusang Mamamalakaya ng Pilipinas (Pamalakaya), Anakpawis partylist, Koalisyon Kontra Kumbersyon ng Manila Bay (KKK-Manila Bay), Save Freedom Island Movement (SFIM) and Sagip Manila Bay Movement (SBMM) described the decision of the Court of Appeals (CA) which dismissed the bid of former Las Pinas representative Cynthia Villar to stop the implementation of the P 14-B reclamation project.
“The CA ignored the people’s collective and legitimate interest of the Filipino people in favor of large-scale reclamation giants. This is an affront to national interest involving people’s livelihood, environmental protection and security from deluge like flooding and human disaster,” said Fernando Hicap, chairperson of Pamalakaya and vice chairperson of Anakpawis partylist in a press statement.
The fisherfolk leader said the decision wants the human disaster to happen first before it could decide whether to grant the demand for writ of kalikasan. “The CA decision in rejecting the bid for writ of kalikasan by Rep. Villar is like telling the Filipino public to wait first for the disaster to happen before we can act with dispatch and render proper resolution to the case,” said Hicap.
Pamalakaya, Anakpawis partylist and other groups said the CA ruling appears like gambling and exposing the lives of more than 300,000 residents of Las Pinas and another 300,000 residents of Paranaque to yearly flooding and environmental catastrophe due to flooding as predictable effect of large-scale reclamation, aside from the fact that reclamation has negative impact of the livelihood and community rights of nearly 5 million people mostly fisherfolk and urban poor in nearby Cavite province, and other areas like Navotas, Malabon, Bulacan, Pampanga and Bataan, all located and sourcing their livelihood in Manila Bay.
“We hope the CA would reconsider this decision and reverse in soonest time possible their rejection of the writ of kalikasan asked by Rep. Villar and nearly half-a-million people in Las Pinas City. Let us save and build lives and livelihood, let us protect the environment from profit-starved corporations,” the group added.
In a 48-page decision released Friday, the third division of the Court Appeals through Associate Justice Apolinario Bruselas said the petition lacked merit and was premature. The CA argued that neither legal nor factual bases with which to grant the privilege of the writ of kalikasan.
Rep. Villar asked the Supreme Court last year to stop the implementation of a 635-hectare reclamation project in Manila Bay which she said may impede the natural river flow in her city and destroy the remaining 175-hectare mangrove forest and marine habitat in Las Pinas and Paranaque that may cause flooding in many villages.
The firm — All Tech Contractors Incorporated — was allowed by the Philippine Reclamation Authority (PRA) to reclaim 635 hectares of foreshore areas in Manila Bay beside the 175-hectare protected mangroves, lagoons and ponds known as the Las Pinas-Paranaque Critical Habitat and Ecotourism Area.
Joining Rep. Villar in her petition in her petition were the 315,849 residents in Las Pinas and the findings of a hydrological services consultant she tapped in support of her petition.She said the project would cause massive flooding in 65 coastal villages since it will impeded natural flow of water to the bay.
She added that the project would destroy one of Metro Manila’s last nature reserves and bird sanctuaries—the Las Piñas-Parañaque Coastal Lagoon or the 175 hectares of Salt marshes, tidal areas and three mangrove-clad islands that serve as home or resting spot for dozens of bird species, including the globally threatened Philippine duck and Chinese egret.