WORLD-famous Boracay Island in Aklan welcomed on Monday, Feb. 13, 2023, the first luxury cruise ship to visit it since the start of the pandemic in 2020. Stakeholders hope and pray the cruise ship’s visit – with its over 500 international passengers – will have an impact on Boracay’s tourism industry, especially now that it has gradually recovered from the impact of the global health crisis.
The visitors would surely be pleased to see a clean and pristine Boracay five years after its massive rehabilitation from environmental degradation.
We had hoped that Boracay Island would be the last tourism spot to suffer from environmental degradation. And we still do hold on to that hope. If we only comply with environmental laws we would not have to deal with environmental problems.
The Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, and the Ecological Solid Waste Management (ESWM) Law – the implementation of these will address solid waste disposal issues.
All tourist destinations must have, for example, 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) 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.
The truth is that main problem in Boracay is 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.
