Baguio Citizens Action: Urbanization Has Its Risks

By: Ariane Amparo

Baguio City Citizens Action (BCA), a non-governmental organization that offers assistance to the City fears that as the city gets more urbanized, the more environmental risks are created.

Virginia de Guia, a BCA officer, enumerated several environmental risks that the City faces at the course of urbanization in terms of the construction of new and bigger buildings and infrastructures. She said that such construction poses a problem that might be only realized in the next two to three years.

The first risk according to de Guia is the shortage of trees.

It is already a common knowledge that trees help reduce the effects of typhoons by sucking a fair amount of water enough for their growth. The city, according to her is not exempted from the effects of global warming so the city still needs trees despite of its natural cool climate.

She added that the more number of trees cut to give way to the construction of buildings; more animals such as the birds are deprived of their natural habitat.

The second risk is the shortage of residential lots.

Baguio City, at present , is an overpopulated locale. It is exceeding almost a hundred percent of the supposed population of 25,000 people only. A research from the Ecological Research and Development Foundation Inc., (ERDFI) reveals that by 2010, a majority of Baguio’s total land area are no longer residential but commercial.

While taking into consideration that Baguio City is the education center of the North, de Guia said that students who plan to pursue their college education in the city are the victims. This is so because of the demand for boarding houses and any shortage of residential land will impede these students from studying in the city.

When more business establishments are put up according to de Guia, job opportunities likewise increase but this has also negative effects to the environment of Baguio City. Hired employees who come from neighboring towns, cities and provinces do not only add up to the city’s population but as well as to the practices that Baguio residents are doing consciously or unconsciously in destroying its environment.

The last environmental risk according to de Guia is the softening of the lands in the city. She fears that when the time comes that the lands where buildings and infrastructures (The Baguio flyover in particular) stand, loosen up because it can no longer hold such buildings, it creates a more serious problem.

De Guia admits that urbanization is good but if it gets too much, a chain reaction on the environmental risks might come into place.

BCA, at present is carrying a tedious process of informing Baguio residents about their own doings that have an impact on the city’s environment. They are now in the final planning stage of launching an information campaign on the environmental risks of urbanization.