Saving Boracay
BY JOJO A. ROBLES / The Manila Standard Today

Let’s take a break from politics and revisit Boracay Island, the Philippines’ perennial top entry in any list of the world’s best beaches.

But now, the threat of permanent degradation of the famous crushed-coral shoreline hangs over the resort island because of plans to lengthen the airport on nearby Caticlan Point in the Panay mainland, to accommodate larger planes that will bring in more tourists.
A group of local stakeholders belonging to the Boracay Foundation and the environmental activist organization Earthsavers are protesting plans to extend the runway in Caticlan, on the ground that the leveling of a hill that protects the resort island from seasonal winds to allow for a longer airport would eventually destroy the world-renowned beach.

Caticlan Hill on the landward side of the current 900-meter runway will have to be flattened to make way for a 2.1-km takeoff-and-landing area that can accommodate bigger wide-bodied airliners.
The build-operate-transfer contract to extend Caticlan airport, which at present only allows small domestic planes to take off and land, is now in the hands of highly diversified conglomerate San Miguel Corp. The seven-year, P2.5-billion project was initially awarded to a group led by George Yang, formerly McDonald’s Philippines franchise owner, which sold it to SMC.
The Caticlan International Airport Development Corp. which will operate the facility will also presumably allow direct flights into and out of the new airport once a new runway is built. And when the hill is flattened and the big jets come in, the people opposing the new runway say we might as well kiss Boracay goodbye.
A government landform specialist, Dr. Ricarte Javelosa of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, has opined that the destruction of Caticlan Hill would upset the “micro-climate” in the area, putting Boracay’s beach at risk to winds carrying topsoil that would bury the coral overlay that stays cool underfoot even in the hottest weather. Javelosa predicts that with the hill gone, seasonal amihan and habagat wind currents would dump soil on the country’s best beach.
The hill, according to Dr. Javelosa, also prevents wind from stirring up big waves that would erode the powdery white coral sand. Right now, the gentle breezes can only generate small waves that are incapable of washing Boracay’s acclaimed sand back into the sea, Javelosa insists.
Meanwhile, opposers of the project declare that the environmental permits granted to the airport operator only covers the upgrading of the airport and its terminal, without explicitly allowing its extension. This would mean that any attempt to lengthen the runway would be a violation of the permits granted to the private airport operator and an illegal act.
Besides, according to the new runway’s critics, the construction of an international airport in Caticlan would also violate international regulations that the Philippines has agreed to, because there are already airports where big planes can land in Kalibo, Aklan to the east and on Carabao Island to the north. The International Civil Aviation Organization prohibits the construction of international airports within 25 miles of existing ones, for safety reasons, to avoid clogging the air lanes that planes use.
Even in the short term, the foundation warns, a longer runway and additional flights could actually drive tourists away from Boracay because of intolerable noise levels that bigger planes will cause. The noise pollution would certainly turn off those who visit the island to seek peace and quiet—conditions that will become impossible when large planes start taking off and landing at all hours of the day and night.
Then there’s the not-so-small matter of alleged overpricing of the contract’s cost, which critics say will force the operator to charge terminal fees even on arriving passengers—something no other local airport does. The private airport operator will have to do that because of the high cost of building the new runway, even if a similar project like the longer 2.2-km Lal-lo, Cagayan airport cost only P1.6 billion.
These considerations may have been overlooked by San Miguel, the cash-rich conglomerate which is looking all over for investments in infrastructure, among other fields, in order to diversify its core food-and-beverage business, according to Boracay’s stakeholders. And for a prestigious company like SMC, being associated with such a controversial and potentially disastrous project may give it a black eye that it certainly doesn’t deserve.
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But over and above all these many and varied concerns, the bottom line for the protectors of Boracay’s endangered environment and thriving tourism trade remains the saving of Caticlan Hill. Unless the plans to level the natural buffer against seasonal winds are abandoned, Boracay—like so many of our natural treasures—will soon cease to exist, they say.
At this point, the island’s stakeholders say, all they want is independent validation of the findings of DENR’s Dr. Javelosa concerning the impact of leveling the hill on the island’s micro-climate. This can easily be done by agencies like the US Geological Survey or the University of the Philippines’ Geology Department, they add.
And the time to do this is right now, before the first earth-movers are deployed to Caticlan to start flattening the hill to make way for the longer runway. Any work on the hill should not be allowed to start unless the issue of upsetting the fragile narutal geological and ecological conditions that gave birth to Boracay’s fabled beach is resolved.
At the same time, SMC must look into reports that it bought a project that was approved based on an illegal environmental permit that did not call for the extension of the existing runway. DENR, meanwhile, can clear up the matter, as well, by categorically stating that the environmental compliance certificate it issued to the private airport operator is valid and allows for the extension—not just the generic “upgrading”—of Caticlan airport.
Far too many of our unique natural treasures have been lost because of short-sighted money-making goals. Everything that we got from nature and that we should take care of for the sake of future generations of Filipinos, from our forests to our water reserves, is irretrievably vanishing.
Now the national jewel that is Boracay is being threatened with destruction, apparently by those who believe that more tourist revenues are enough justification for losing yet another of the few things that the world envies us for. Unless the government and the investors in the proposed new airport factor in the sustainability of Boracay in their calculations, they may kill the proverbial goose that has proven time and again to lay the golden egg —the pristine beauty of the country’s best-known beach.
What would higher tourism income mean in the long run, after all, if we lose Boracay forever because of nearsighted greed?