Protected on paper

The applause came fast. Another win for the coast, the social media boosters said, and who wants to pick a fight with mangroves and typhoon defense. But we would only add one caveat, and it is not small: read the ordinance to the end.

The Coastal Greenbelt Zone (CGZ) Ordinance, passed unanimously on July 1, does something odd. It defines a beach forest – Section 3 even names the species, from talisay (Terminalia catappa) to agoho (Casuarina equisetifolia) and botong (Barringtonia asiatica) – seats a beach-forest expert on its committee, and orders a citywide inventory of them. Then it protects none of it. Every prohibited act in Section 13, and every peso of penalty in Section 14, applies only to the Mangrove Conservation Zone. Cut a mangrove, you are fined. Bulldoze a stand of talisay inside the same greenbelt, and the law says nothing.

That is the gap in one line. Beach forest, named and defined, then left without teeth.

The numbers do not line up either. Section 4 establishes about 110 hectares of mangrove forests in four barangays. Section 5 then declares the 100-meter no-build rule “across all thirty-two coastal barangays,” before quietly narrowing back to the same few mangrove sites, Molo Boulevard among them.

Molo Boulevard, a hardened and largely reclaimed promenade. Someone should ask CENRO what mangroves actually grow there, because the no-build zone and the reclamation ban both apply “within the CGZ,” as this ambiguity is a developer’s dream. When the no-build and reclamation bans in Sections 6 and 8 eventually go to court, you can bet lawyers will argue the binding zone only applies to those mapped 110 hectares, not the entire 32-barangay coast.

Now the part that should nag anyone who knows this coast. Most of Iloilo’s shoreline is sand, not mud. Mangroves will not take there; beach forest will. This is the finding of Dr. Jurgenne Primavera and Dr. Resurreccion Sadaba, whose handbook on Philippine beach forests was published by SEAFDEC in Tigbauan, half an hour down the road. Primavera, who helped draft the stalled national greenbelt bill, has said a working greenbelt is a combination of mangroves and beach forest. They wrote the reference book on this but the ordinance came out narrower than the science.

And if someone does break the rules? The math is amusing. The ordinance sets a PHP 4,000 fine for commercial violators. Think about the land value of a reclaimed coastal frontage. A PHP 4,000 penalty is not a deterrent but pocket change. The city also allocated just PHP 5,000,000 annually to enforce all this. Try stretching PHP 5,000,000 across 32 barangays for boundary buoys, onshore monuments, demolition, and monitoring. It’s incredibly thin money for heavy lifting.

The fix is one amendment cycle away. Add beach forest destruction to Section 13. Map it to Section 14. Give Section 4 a real beach-forest area target. Bring in the local experts from UP Visayas or SEAFDEC to draft the technical maps before the six-month report is due.

The ordinance is not misguided so much as unfinished, and unfinished is the easiest kind of flaw to fix.