Foreign tourists visiting Manila are often told by locals that they must not leave the Philippine capital city without doing three things:
- Ride a jeepney
- Tour the old Spanish churches and walls of Intramuros
- View the majestic sunset at Manila Bay
But the third in this list of tourist “must-dos” may soon be written off, as the controversial Manila Solar City reclamation project will allegedly deprive the public of unobstructed views of the bay.
A multilateral group known as the S.O.S. Manila Bay Coalition together with urban poor groups, environmentalists and heritage activists started an online petition asking Manila Mayor Alfredo Lim to stop the reclamation plan. S.O.S. Manila Bay also put up a Facebook page to persuade more netizens to join its advocacy.
The opposition was already in motion when the first proposal to reclaim parts of the bay was approved by the Philippine Reclamation Authority (PRA), then known as the Public Estates Authority, back in 1990. A year later, the PRA issued to Elco Development & Construction Corporation (EDCC) a “Notice of Award to reclaim and develop” the Manila Bay. EDCC later assigned all its rights and obligations to Manila Goldcoast Development Corp. (MGDC). However, the planned Manila Bay reclamation was staunchly opposed by concerned citizens and the Manila City Council also passed City Ordinance No. 7777, ultimately prohibiting the reclamation.
Two decades later, the ordinance was repealed by City Ordinance No. 8233, which reversed the prohibition. A consortium agreement was then signed in April 2012. The city government consented to reclamation proposals by MGDC, which plans to build the so-called Manila Solar City in the area to be reclaimed at the back of the Philippine Navy and Manila Yacht Club.
People who are against the Manila Bay reclamation started making their voices of opposition heard once again. Fortunately for them, it’s much easier nowadays to propagate your cause amongst the public.
The reclamation project poses several potential problems, including environmental degradation and further urban congestion. This, S.O.S. also acknowledged: “[T]his is not just about the sunset… In addition to blocking the view of the sunset from Malate and Ermita, the reclamation will worsen floods, extinguish the tourism area along Roxas Boulevard, destroy the potential of our historic Intramuros, remove 20 vital anchorage berths for ships and most of all, take away from us a waterfront we all love.”
But S.O.S. Manila Bay has chosen to highlight the preservation of the Manila Bay sunset as the driving force of its campaign against the reclamation. In fact, the profile image on its Facebook page implies that the S.O.S. actually means “Save Our Sunset.” Last week, the coalition also chose “sunset viewing” as the means for their publicized protest against the reclamation project.
This leads us to ask a few questions. Is saving the Manila sunset view more important than urban development, a potential economic boost, and job generation? And ultimately, will the Manila Bay reclamation project really block the view of the sunset?
The above image, which was posted in S.O.S. Manila Bay’s Facebook page and circulated by the anti-reclamation groups elsewhere, shows an artistic rendition of the Manila Bay sunset as it is now and what it will supposedly look like in 2020 if the Solar City reclamation project pushes through. It implies that seven years from now, the Manila Bay sunset will be blocked from view by tall buildings. “It is a picture that will rile anybody up,” blogger Paul Farol said. True enough, the photo elicited some comments expressing support to S.O.S. Manila Bay’s advocacy of “Saving Our Sunset.”
But proponents of the planned reclamation were also quick to point out what they deemed as an inaccuracy in the artist’s rendition. “That’s a very wrong position of the sunset… Very inaccurate. It seems that the sun is setting at northwest. As an avid fan of sunsets, I can assure there will still be a sunset in Roxas Boulevard. Not to worry,” Ibarra Tomas Siapno, one of those who commented on the posted image, said.
Farol, in a blog entry, also debunked S.O.S. Manila Bay’s claim that the sunset will be blocked by Manila Solar City. The image above is generated from SunCalc, a website that shows sun movement and sunlight phases during the given day at the given location. The picture, Farol said,“indicates that the sun sets right towards the center of the bay, not towards the Pier.” He pointed out that the S.O.S. Manila Bay image, thus, shows one glaring inaccuracy when it depicted the sun setting towards Quirino Grandstand or towards the Manila Pier.
According to Farol, he tried checking the sun’s path on specific locations near the bay area using SunCalc to see whether the proposed Manila Solar City project will block the sunset view along Roxas Boulevard. He said he proved that the reclamation project won’t, even if we consider the fact that the sun will set at different angles throughout the year. He even concluded that S.O.S. Manila Bay “purposely timed their sunset viewing at this time of year when the sun sets nearest the proposed site of Manila Solar City.”
“S.O.S. is purposely deceiving the public by not telling them that from March onwards, the sun’s trajectory will progressively veer away from Manila Solar City and the succeeding sunsets will be closer to the Quirino Grandstand, completely missing the Manila Solar City development!” exclaimed Farol.
“Even now, the sun’s trajectory barely glances the edge of the proposed development and really, this can be addressed by not building structures that would obstruct the view of the setting sun from Quirino Avenue,” he added.
Most readers of Farol’s blog entry were apparently convinced that his observations seem to corroborate with the evidence. They thought that S.O.S. Manila Bay should find a more compelling reason, other than the sunset, in order to validly make a sound opposition to the reclamation project.
“If this advocacy was about preventing the negative effects of land reclamation to the environment, I would gladly support this,” said one commenter on S.O.S. Manila Bay’s Facebook page. “I’d be more concerned if they presented data which would show something like increased flooding if this was to push through, but sunsets? Really?” another one remarked.
Developer MDGC, for its part, assured that the reclamation “will not cause floods and will, in fact, reduce the occurrence of floods like other reclamation models all over the globe.”
“The development project, envisioned to abide by world-class best practices and standards, and with the use of state-of-the-art green reclamation technology, will not impact adversely on the environment,” MDGC said in its official statement. On the contrary, it said, “the creation of a new commercial center at the heart of the Metro will spawn a myriad of opportunities both in terms of employment and revenues collected by local and national governments.”
The estate developer also disputed claims that the project would destroy the Manila Bay sunset view. “The planned reclamation does not involve the 1.5-kilometer stretch between the Manila Yacht Club and the US Embassy along Roxas Boulevard. It will be located at the back of the Philippine Navy and Manila Yacht Club 600 meters towards the bay.”
“With a frontage of only 635 meters parallel to Roxas Boulevard, and occupying less than 0.082% of the bay’s 1800 square kilometer surface area, it will not deprive Manilans, much less Filipinos, of the fabled Manila Bay sunset. With our boundary only up to the Ospital ng Maynila, a full kilometer from the US Embassy, to be established in an area – most of Roxas Boulevard and the whole of the CCP and PICC complexes – that stands on reclaimed area to begin with, neither will it be a blot on the historic allure of the bay,” MDGC explained.
If the projection of the sun’s path turns out to be accurate and the area to be reclaimed and developed is indeed away from the sunset view, then any opposition to the reclamation based on the sunset argument should fail.
This is not to say that the opponents of the bay reclamation project do not have any point at all in their advocacy. What they should do perhaps is re-assess the focus of their campaign, from the sunset to the more significant issues, such as the impact of reclamation on human communities, coastal and marine geology, biodiversity, heritage structures, and climate change.
We’ll see how this dispute pans out, but for now the Manila Bay sunset remains on the list of tourist “must-dos.”
