Kalikasan People’s Network for the Environment (Kalikasan PNE), an Environmental activist group called for the protection of the Nayong Pilipino Foundation’s 8.5-hectare urban forest park from being converted into what they called “a questionable mega-infrastructure project masquerading as a COVID solution.”
In a statement, Leon Dulce, national coordinator of Kalikasan PNE said that the Nayong Pilipino urban forest park is a critical safe space that will benefit the 1.2 million residents of Pasay and Paranaque Cities suffering from the pandemic lockdown.
Experts concluded last year that we need green open spaces now more than ever to provide the public with socially distanced breathing and recreation space, pollution and disease control, and long-term climate resilience, said Dulce.
Kalikasan PNE find it questionable that a mega vaccination center is being forced on top of an important green space, when public health experts have been pushing for decentralizing vaccination hubs to bring them closer to the people instead.
The environmental activist group believe it is not difficult and may even be more cost-effective to retrofit existing built environments like malls, golf courses, sports complexes and the like for vaccination facilities. Based on reports, more than 450 trees are expected to be cut to give way to the mega vax center, while the “Wild Bird Club of the Philippines” noted that at least 177 birds belonging to 25 different species were documented in just 2 hours of monitoring bird populations in the urban forest.
Dulce also explained that it’s not just the birds and the bees, but the increasing loss of green spaces across Metro Manila is making people more vulnerable to floods and other extreme climate impacts. And at least eight million Filipinos were forced to contend with agricultural and property destruction while facing the prospect of COVID-19 super-spreader events because of Typhoons Rolly through Ulysses last year.
Dulce ended by saying that the climate crisis did not cease to exist when the COVID-19 pandemic came about. Government should not be forcing the public to choose which disaster they are willing to face. The government is mandated to ensure the public’s safety from all these risks.
The proposed mega-vaccination facility is currently under public criticism for emerging anomalies, including its approval despite not being included in the Department of Health’s national deployment and vaccination plan and the allocation of the Nayong Pilipino’s property, by law solely for public purposes.
