THE RESPONSIBILITY to continue the rehabilitation of Boracay Island is now with the provincial government of Aklan and the local government unit of Malay. The Boracay Inter-Agency Task Force (BIATF), whose mandate ended on June 30, officially turned over the task to them.
Of course, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources under the new Marcos administration has the option to revive BIATF. Let us see what will happen in the next few months.
We hope that Boracay Island would be the last tourism spot to suffer from environmental degradation. Other tourist destinations should learn from the mistakes made in Boracay.
The truth is that main problem in Boracay before its massive rehabilitation beginning in 2018 was the weak enforcement of and non-compliance in the country’s environmental laws. And this is not unique to the island resort. The buck actually stops with concerned government agencies and local government units. They must step up in enforcing our laws.
But people and businesses, too, have a big role to play to preserve tourist spots like Boracay. We should not use our islands, seas, bays and rivers as sewerage or garbage bins. We should not build on protected areas or encroach critical biodiversity areas; instead, we must preserve our wetlands and forestlands, which ensure the balance of our ecosystem.
If we simply comply with environmental laws, especially the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, and the Ecological Solid Waste Management (ESWM) Law, we would not have to be here. The implementation of the ESWM law will address solid waste disposal issues.
All tourist destinations must have functioning sewerage and septage systems. Figures from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources show around 7.5 million liters of wastewater was generated in Boracay every day (prior to its massive cleanup in 2018) but only about half was treated properly, while the other half was discharged untreated. About 30 to 40 percent of the untreated wastewater came from private homes, and the rest from business establishments.
We would not have to deal with environmental problems if we only comply with environmental laws.
