Sometime last year, we were pleasantly informed of an international report that cited 11 of our cities as among the cleanest in Southeast Asia. It was short lived as it turns out. According to Greenpeace, such rankings stemmed from the lack of proper monitoring systems in the country. Metro Manila is a heavily polluted city and we who live here know it. We don’t need such air monitoring equipment to tell us, otherwise.
A big source of these harmful air
particulates come from the transport sector. And being named by traffic mobile
app, Waze, as the country with the worst traffic congestion, we can expect a
high percentage of such harmful particulates present in our environment.
According to the Department of the Environment and Natural Resources, 65
percent of total carbon emissions in the Philippines comes from our motorized
vehicles with close to 30 percent of that from our jeepneys. If this continues
without any form of intervention, there will be an increase of 200+percent of
these harmful
emissions by 2030.
This will have a tremendous impact on our national state of health. And we are not in good standing already. As of 2010, national health costs, mostly respiratory illnesses from degrading air quality was 1.5 percent of our gross domestic product. In 2018, the World Health Organization reported that the country had the third-highest number of deaths globally due to air pollution.
Good that we have the Clean Air Act to set forth the road map for our country to protect our environment from harmful air pollutants. This law laid the foundation for several directives from various government departments including the Department of Transportation. Among the programs of the department is the Motor Vehicle Inspection System and, of course, the Public Utility Vehicle Modernization Program that would modernize not just the jeepneys but all the other modes of mass road public transport. A key component of this program would be the shift from Euro 2 to Euro 4 engines. I had a telephone conversation with the LTFRB Chairman two weeks ago and he is confident that we will hit the targets and meet the deadline to modernize the present jeepney fleet, as set by President Duterte. That would be next year. And although, I myself, would believe a more realistic date of completion of two more years, nevertheless, it would still be good news for all of us.
We can do more. One way is to really push policies on low-carbon urban mobility. This would include, as I mentioned in my previous column, providing more incentives, such as in the form of tax exemptions to manufacturers and users of such alternative transport.
The government also needs to spearhead and redirect our current transport policies from a highly motorized orientation, such as roads and highways to more basic mobility. I am basically referring to providing more adequate and secure walking and biking areas. Walking and biking are last mile endeavors. Hence, if this is the direction that we need to take, then government infrastructure programs should also provide for adequate bike lanes and pedestrian walkways that would connect to main transport arteries, such as rails, bus and jeepney lines.
When I was still in government, we mapped out a Metro Manila-wide network of exclusive pedestrian walkways and bike lanes that would connect all the 17 LGUs of Metro Manila. The network would include all the riverbanks and government lands. It can still be done. The areas are still there. And it is not expensive at all.
Fighting air pollution and global warming is an undertaking that we all need to work on together with the government at the helm. It starts with improving our state of current motorized transport conditions. But it also means lessening our dependency on such motorized transport and going back to providing infrastructure to accommodate our basic form of mobility.
Thomas Tim Orbos was former DOTr undersecretary for roads and general manager of the MMDA. He is currently undertaking further studies at the McCourt School of Public Policy of Georgetown University. He can be reached via e-mail at thomas_orbos@sloan.mit.edu