Rehabilitation beyond government mandate, an on-going battle against unsustainable growth and tourism
Philippine Tourism in Numbers
In 2017 global tourism accounted 1.323 billion arrivals around the world. The Philippines Department of Tourism missed it original 2018 target but somehow managed to receive 7.1 million foreign visitors in spite of the Boracay closure.
Naming a few, the islands of Siargao, Siquijor, Coron, and El Nido were once off-the-beaten path are now on the tourism radar and growing at a rapid pace. While each destination has both unique and individual problems they also share some of the same eco-sustainability issues.
However, comparisons between our town and other tourists destinations are quickly done without regard to context and while many visitors have shown concern for a potential closure to El Nido, note that this is not the case, though could be the answer.
Closures have happened in various countries and are not unique to the Philippines- Maya Bay in Thailand and nine islands in Perak, Malaysia were all closed in the past couple of years. The Indonesian island, Bali received 3.5 million in the first six months of 2018 looking to equal if not surpass the Philippines in total arrivals. Thailand received nearly 35 million from January through November. With these huge number of foreign arrivals in the region it’s a breath of fresh air to know we are behind on number of arrivals as basic infrastructure tries to catch up to the growth.
Boracay’s 2 million foreign arrivals shows the nightmare of exponential growth of tourists coming into to a snail-paced infrastructure race. Combine this with corruption and lack of regulation on the part local government not following national government environmental policy and of course you’ve got a receipt for disaster and some reason for closure. El Nido has much of the same recipe though a few different ingredients for its own disaster. In the end, the state of global tourism is a problem. The world’s addiction to travel has put tremendous stress on destinations visited, coupled with unplanned, unsustainable development means we gotta go to rehab!
El Nido Versus Boracay
While El Nido has many of the same characteristics of Boracay it is a different game. El Nido in terms of land space is about 90x the size of Boracay. Boracay produces nearly 4x the amount of waste and has over 10x the amount of tourists El Nido receives. El Nido represents 45 islands and islets in Bacuit Bay, Boracay is one island. While El Nido doesn’t have the capacity or the airport to cater to mass tourism, infrastructure is currently catching up. You will not yet, see the mass tourism that is evident in Boracay. Large Chinese and Korean groups are very rare in El Nido while they make up the largest market of foreign arrivals in Boracay. Running down the comparisons helped support a Boracay closure while El Nido was simply entered into rehab.
| El Nido | Boracay | |
| garbage | 22 tonnes | 80 tonnes |
| tourism arrivals | 200,000 | 2 million annually |
| market | Seemingly transitioning to mass tourism | mass tourism |
| size | 923.3 km² | 10.32 km² |
| number of islands | 45 | 1 |
Let’s go to rehab!
For many citizens of El Nido, rehabilitation didn’t start with the announcement of Boracay’s closure last April. It didn’t start at the end of November 2018 when Environment Secretary Roy Cimatu, Tourism Secretary Bernadette Romulo Puyat, and Interior Secretary Eduardo Año, came for a visit outlining a 6-month “rehabilitation.” From the perspective of many locals, rehabilitation is more than a 6-month stint of being told what to do by national government, though we thank them for their support in what should have been happening all along. Please continue sending memos to our local officials. For the community, it’s an ownership of the town’s problems and a battle against irresponsible tourism development, a hope that an ill-equipped town, local government can prepare itself for global tourism.
The rehab started in the 1980s when the local island accommodation group El Nido Resorts start operating with an ecological mindset. It continued over a year ago, when prior to December 2017 legislation banning plastics was passed, and when El Nido Plastic Bans group continued a long growing conversation lobbying for the ban. It started when local business owners were heavily lobbying for local government to step-up and not to simply implement new rules but regulate what was implemented. The rehabilitation started when local business owners in Nacpan put together a summer school to help empower local children to do daily beach clean-ups, further educated them why this was important. The stories of grassroots efforts, non-profits and individuals living in El Nido are endless but many of these narratives are disconnected because what they lack are the support of local government units.
ESTEL was created out of the growing awareness that these efforts should be shared and to help provide tourists the perspective into the problems that tourism creates. We don’t simply welcome people to take photos, we ask them to learn and reflect on their own impact as tourists, businesses or ordinary citizens. The folks at Art Cafe continue to pour time and energy into the community regularly pushing for environmental awareness, the Qi Palawan group moved towards renewable energy because of lack of proper electricity from town, Sunmai and others in Nacpan with the help of environmental officers from El Nido Resorts created the El Nido Turtle Marine Network, there are many other unmentioned narratives that happen behind the scenes of El Nido tourism and these folks aren’t evening get a pat on the back. Read more: El Nido’s Stakeholders
