Residents of Barangay Binuangan in Obando, Bulacan, have endured the harsh effects of sea-level rise it impacted on their children’s education. For the past two years, their learning spaces had dealt with flooding in increasing frequency. It did not help thatt the construction of the New Manila International Airport in Manila Bay has aggravated their situation.
Jener Bautista, a longtime resident of the island, says that although Brgy. Binuangan is prone to high tide flooding like everywhere else in Manila Bay, it was only recently that they have felt its worst consequences. Since last year, flooding has forced them to relocate the students to higher grounds in the chapels, churches, and buildings of faith scattered around their island barangay.
“Lumindol po kasi dito noon. Tapos nung nagkabitak yung school, ang ginawang school doon ay bawat simbahan,” he said. Jener himself studied up to Grade 3 in Binuangan Elementary School, as it was the only public school on the island, with its graduates sometimes taking up to four 20-minute boat trips a day to study in the high schools located in mainland Obando.
Binuangan ES has a carrying capacity of 600, just enough to host the children of over 1,500 families living there.
The Department of Education (DepEd) in Binuangan recognized these places of worship as alternative classrooms and classified them as official alternative temporary learning systems (ATLS). However, even these churches face an imminent threat of flooding.
Alvin, a 52-year old Binuangan-born construction worker said that local workers have been fortifying the sea walls and adding bricks to these ATLS places.
“Nung nilindol doon, nagkaroon siya ng mga crack. Unang una, parang mahina din yung pagkakagawa ng building na ‘yon. Pangalawa di na nila nagamit yung iba pang building na nakatayo, kasi napasukan na ng tubig yung pinakamababang classroom,” Alvin said.
Binuangan’s residents observes that on the average, water level rises to one meter every two years.
The local government has allocated P 6.2 million pesos this year for disaster risk and reduction, along with fishing and mangrove recovery.
Alvin’s job is essential– he and his fellow workers get to work piling bricks atop of bricks every year. Some of the churches, he noted were newly-constructed, while others were built on top of an existing building, now submerged. After the ATLS, they would get to work on the canals and main streets surrounding the main streets of Binuangan.
Alvin noted that they finished in one week, as they worked after the tide had receded following barangay’s San Juan festival. Most of their construction material were mossy and old, as they recycled the debris and old blocks washed ashore from previous settlements nearby Manila Bay, including the stones dislodged by the New Manila International Airport (NMIA).
NMIA is a $ 13.9 billion project of San Miguel Corporation (SMC) through San Miguel Aerocity, Inc. as an answer to the congested runways of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport. NMIA stretched over 35 kilometers of the coastline in Bulacan, was approved in September 2019 and has started construction since 2020.
Concerns have been raised by local fisherfolks and environmentalists since the reclamation project started, citing flooding and diminishing fish catch in areas adjacent to the project, like Barangays Binuangan and Taliptip.
While SMC has annually rolled out skills and livelihood training to affected fisherfolks and non-government organizations in Brgy. Taliptip and similar areas in Bulacan since 2020, their concerns have not been fully answered, as no relocation plan or permanent sustainable solutions were presented to the fisherfolk.
A number of these fisherfolk associations, environmental groups, and other members of civil society around Bulacan formed the Alyansa ng mga Mamamayan para sa Pagtatanggol sa Kabuhayan, Paninirahan at Kalikasan ng Manila Bay (AKAP Ka Manila Bay) to seek answers to these concerns.
“Ang sentimiento ng mga mangingisda ay ang pagliit ng kanilang mga huli simula nung reklamasyon ng [NMIA] (…) Ang Obando, isa lang sa mga lugar dito na naapektuhan ng pagpapatayo nito,” noted Jhed Tamano, program coordinator for AKAP Ka Manila Bay.
Louisito, the Vice-Chairman of the recently formed Binuangan Fisherfolks Association, lamented that there was no official demarcation of the sea areas used by the reclamation project. Pressured by fewer fish catch, the fisherfolk are uncertain whether they would be allowed to continue their livelihood in the same waters they’ve been fishing in for decades prior.
“Ang mahabol lang namin, yung mapag-aral yung anak namin para maalis sa dagat,” he said.
The sea-level rise affecting Manila Bay has threatened to sink Metro Manila for decades, with recent evidence being Typhoon Carina’s six-day onslaught, costing a hefty P 1.36 billion loss for fisherfolks in the area and around P 3 billion lost in the agricultural sector according to the Department of Agriculture’s Disaster Risk and Reduction Management report.
The National Mapping and Resource Information Authority has noted that the city has been sinking at a steady rate of 13 millimeters per year since the 1960s, compounded by rapid urbanization and groundwater extraction.
Climate scientists are concerned that at this rate, cities in Metro Manila and Bulacan, like other cities in Southeast Asia, are likely to be underwater by 2050.
(This report was made possible through a grant from DW Akademie and the Philippine Network of Environmental Journalists.)
