THE absence of an approved Comprehensive Land Use Plan (Clup) in Baguio City will be its biggest drawback in protecting its remaining biodiversity.
Urban planner Sheree Nolasco relayed this in the latest public hearing on the Clup, saying that the lack of an approved plan further endangers the remaining pine forest cover in the city.
Nolasco said the plan will identify areas for development and areas to be reserved for open spaces to maintain the city’s biodiversity.
According to Nolasco, the ratio of constructions to open spaces has been reduced drastically. “We don’t consider commercial gardens and streets as open spaces. In urban development, we only consider as open spaces the parks, waterways, ponds, lakes, and playgrounds,” she said.
She also criticized the existing Clup as mainly a “compilation of statistics” which only discusses on the kind of development allowed in an area.
While she agrees a Clup is needed as soon as possible, the urban planner stressed this must not be done in haste and has to carefully look into the future growth of the city.
The urban planner linked the importance of open spaces to the health of a city such as Baguio sharing people who have five minute access to open spaces like forests and parks are healthier.
Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) regional executive director Clarence Baguilat agrees with Nolasco saying the existing CLUP needs further analysis to clearly identify houses built in geohazard zones.
Baguilat added that Baguio pine trees are now under siege mainly because of the growing number of people in the city.
This he said is clearly evident in the shrinking of Baguio’s watersheds.
In Buyog watershed some 40 percent of the area has been overran by illegal settlers.
The same is also being experienced in Busol watershed where houses and gardens have been constructed in areas where they are supposedly disallowed.
He said the task of protecting the environment should not be by their agency alone but by all sectors.
Baguilat also said the city no longer has space for planting trees for the National Regreening Program except in parks. He said many of the open spaces and public lands are either occupied or were issued ancestral land titles. He said some 500 hectares or 10 percent of the city are already covered by ancestral land claims.
In the Cordillera, he said, 85 percent are considered forest lands and only 15 percent are considered as alienable and disposable but lamented many people are already residing in classified forest lands.
Another problem he identified is the rampant issuance of ancestral land titles which the DENR considers already as private lands superseding previous declarations and proclamations of the government on protected areas.
Both Nolasco and Baguilat added the city needs a good land use plan to address all these but since the Clup of Baguio remains unapproved.