Destination: Urban Decay

This time it’s not just some corporate entity with no history with the city that’s doing the damage – our very own congressman has been implicated in the issue, the very same person who’s supposed to represent this city’s sentiments, its people’s well-being, its voice in congress. Various media outlets have reported that a complaint has been filed against him.

This is where the city is headed: urban decay.

I am involved in a project right now – writing about the various cultural icons of the Cordilleras, of the Igorots, and one of the things I learned in this project is that the Igorots have a very close relationship and live their lives in harmony with the environment. That’s not even accurate – it is their belief that they are one with the environment. That every plant, every tree, every hill and mountain, has a soul just like us. And that’s why I don’t understand how our Mayor and Congressman, both Igorots, both true natives of this land, can do or propose to do or allow that much harm to the environment.

We’ve allowed these people too much power, in a country where our constitution supposedly guarantees that true power resides in the people and not in Mauricio Domogan, Mayor, Congressman, and now Mayor again, and Nic Aliping, once a Councilor and now Congressman of the City of Baguio, once the official Summer Capital of the Philippines, once considered to be the most beautiful hill station in Asia.

Hundreds of trees have been cut for a road allegedly to service a resort being constructed in Mt. Sto. Tomas. Not much different but definitely worse than the 182 trees that SM wanted out of the way. This came, pardon me for saying this over and over again in this column, at the heels of the Mayor’s determined stance to desecrate the Melvin Jones grounds for a parking facility. What’s the big deal?

We warned then, at the height of the protest against SM, that if the biggest commercial center in the city gets its way, what would stop others from doing the same? What is exactly is that? Sacrifice the environment for money. That’s what the SM expansion plan was really all about above everything else, that’s what the Mt. Sto. Tomas tree massacre is all about and that’s what the proposed parking facility at the Melvin Jones grounds is all about.

Here’s one scenario: SM gets to remove the only remaining forest cover in the city’s Central Business District and we get to park more cars in the area, the Mt. Sto. Tomas issue is swept under the rug and customers of the alleged resort in Mt. Sto. Tomas gets to conveniently drive to there, and the Mayor gets to realize his dream and digs up the Melvin Jones grounds and builds a humongous parking facility therein allowing even more cars to conveniently get right inside the city center.

At what cost? A severely worsened air quality in the Central Business District, the possibility of flooding around the Burnham Park area due to a severely reduced water run-off absorption capacity, and while there have been reports of the effect already being felt by the residents surrounding the Mt. Sto. Tomas project such as severely reduced water supply, we have yet to feel the full effect of that much disturbance to the area’s eco-system.

I honestly don’t know what else we could do to protect the environment, heritage, indeed the dignity of our home – Baguio. One thing is sure though – we cannot just sit back and allow its decay to happen right before eyes and do nothing. I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: we inherited a beautiful city, one built in harmony with and in fact because of its natural environment. What kind of Baguio are we passing on to our children?