Roving ambassador for INTERMEPA and immediate past chairman of AUSMEPA, Neil Baird, was recently in the Philippines to give a presentation on the state of marine pollution in that country and how the country can improve its situation.
Neil Baird
Immediate Past Chairman of AUSMEPA
Roving Ambassador of INTERMEPA
Member Federal Advisory Council Navy League of Australia
Chairman and Editor-in-Chief Baird Maritime
Speech
Presented to the 36th Annual General Assembly Meeting of the Philippine Association of Maritime Institutions
PAMI
At Legazpi City, Albay
On Friday, December 3
"Marine Environment Protection: A Must for Maritime Schools"
Commodore Dante La Jimenez, PAMI Board Members, College Principals, ladies and gentlemen.
Thank you for inviting me to return to this very beautiful, welcoming and quite fascinating part of the world. My previous visit to Legazpi was far too brief so I hope to see and learn more this time.
As Roving Ambassador for INTERMEPA, the International Maritime Environment Protection Association, I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate Commodore Jimenez and his colleagues on the establishment and development of PHILMEPA, the Philippine Marine Environment Protection Association. It is a very important organisation which I am certain you will all hear a lot more about in future and not just in this speech.
I am sorry that I have been forced to illustrate this presentation with the disgusting images that you will see before you. Unfortunately, they were photographed less than six months ago at Corregidor and in Manila Bay.
These illustrate very clearly that much of the sea around your beautiful islands is appallingly polluted. That pollution is unhealthy, unsightly and uneconomic. It is also completely unnecessary.
Drowning in a sea of muck
That pollution represents one of the biggest and fastest growing problems facing your very promising nation. You are drowning in a sea of muck. Land sourced, man-made disgusting garbage is killing off your seas and destroying the attractiveness of your beautiful beaches and reefs.
Now, I know full well that Corregidor and Manila Bay are adjacent to a huge and crowded city but that, to my mind, is no excuse.
I also know, from my own observation that many other, less populated, parts of the Philippine seas are nearly as badly polluted. The Visayas, for example, especially around Cebu, are grossly polluted. Even rustic, far away General Santos City is far from clean. Subic Bay is another place I have been that has been just as badly abused.
Some of you will probably be saying, "Who is this smarty pants from Australia, he must know that lots of other places are polluted too? It's alright for him coming from such a big country with so few people. The last person I want to hear from is a foreign "know all".
I'm well aware of that. I travel widely and frequently and I see many other examples of filthy polluted seas. That certainly doesn't make it acceptable, though.
You know as well as I do that marine pollution is a very serious problem in many parts of the developing and even developed world. In most places, especially in developing countries, it is, tragically, becoming rapidly worse.
Your neighbours' problems are no excuse
Yours neighbours in ASEAN, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and even poor little surrounded Singapore are all wallowing in marine garbage. China, India, some Pacific islands and much of Africa and South America are similarly affected.
That does not excuse the people of the Philippines from trying much harder to clean up the filth in its seas and from preventing more garbage from going into the sea.
I know that many people will say, "We are a poor country. We cannot afford to have clean seas".
Well, I say to you that you cannot afford not to have clean seas. If you do not eliminate your marine pollution, the Philippines will become a much poorer country. By fouling your nest, so to speak, as you are, you will cause major damage to your important tourist industry, for example. You will destroy your fishing industry and you will harm the health and well being of your people in general.
None of you can afford to allow your country to be submerged and drowned in this relentlessly increasing morass of marine pollution.
Before the age of plastics
Some of you, I notice, are about the same age as me. You will recall 30 or 40 years ago, before the age of plastics and over population, when your surrounding seas were comparatively pristine. You know very well what your seas can be like.
Clean seas are achievable and relative poverty is no excuse for not trying. Clean seas are a very high yielding investment, especially for a beautiful country like the Philippines which has so much tourist potential. They are very well worth working for and the return on a very small investment in pollution reduction and prevention will be enormous.
You may well ask, "How or where do we start?"
Now, for a little history and geography lesson. Greece and Turkey surround and dot the Aegean Sea, a beautiful archipelagic region not too different from the Philippines. It is also a beautiful area which oozes history, has a friendly welcoming culture, simple, appropriate cuisine and is very attractive to tourists.
Sailing the "wine dark sea"
I well remember my first visit to the Aegean in 1975. I was on my honeymoon but, as a seafarer, I still managed to take careful note of the sea we passed through and swam in.
Even though, at that time, the populations of both Greece and Turkey were comparatively poor and declining, the global plastic packaging boom had hit the area. I recall that most bottles were still made of glass and metal cans were widely used. However, it was obvious, even then, that the tide of trash was beginning to rise.
I did not return to the Aegean for thirteen years when, with my wife and three very young sons, we cruised the Turkish coast on a yacht. Despite an increasingly and somewhat wealthier population and a massive increase in tourism, the sea had not become grossly more polluted. It was definitely worse but not as bad as I expected.
Turning the tide of trash
A couple of years later I was in Athens for the Posidonia exhibition where I discovered the reason for this slowing of the tide of trash. I was invited to a cocktail reception at HELMEPA, The Hellenic Marine Environment Protection Association, where all was revealed.
I had heard a little about HELMEPA and its work but must admit, coming from the rapidly cleaning coasts of Australia, that I didn't take much notice. Well, in June 1990, at that cocktail party in Piraeus the penny really dropped.
The then Chairman of HELMEPA, Mr Livanos, who was one of the legendary "Golden Greeks" of shipping, (he was Aristotle Onassis's brother in law) decribed the history of HELMEPA.
As most of you would be well aware the Greeks own a lot of ships most of which rarely visit Greece or the Aegean. There are not many cargoes there and the Greek fleet trades world-wide.
Shipowners unfairly blamed
Nevertheless, conventional wisdom and popular opinion were convinced that the rapidly increasing pollution of the Aegean in the late 1970's and early 1980's was largely caused by Greek ships, their owners and crews.
The Greek shipowners, who love to sail the Aegean for pleasure, were well aware of this rapidly increasing pollution problem. They were equally well aware that they, their crews and ships were not the cause of it.
So, partly as an exercise in image improvement but also in a genuine endeavour to improve things, they formed a committee of the Association of Greek Shipowners to look into the problem and, if possible, solve it.
Thus was HELMEPA conceived.
First, however, they needed facts. They wanted to know the extent of the problem, its rate of growth and, most importantly, its real cause or causes.
So, in an attempt to ensure an objective study or survey of all this, they commissioned two leading Greek universities to determine these facts.
Not surprisingly, both universities presented the ship owners with similar reports. Essentially, it was clear that the vast bulk of the marine pollution (more than 90 percent) was land sourced. The plastics, bottles, food packaging, plastic bags, cigarette lighters and so on were mostly clearly labelled or otherwise easily traced. Hydrocarbons were almost entirely automotive sump oil or road spill. Faeces, both human and animal came from very obvious sources.
Paper, glass bottles and steel and aluminium cans were determined to be a smaller and, in any case declining factor.
The real "nasties"
The real nasties were plastics, oil and sewage.
The ship owners, while knowing full well that they were not completely blameless, recognised that they and their employees were very small contributors to the supply of marine muck. They determined to stop even that small contribution. They also determined to try to eliminate the massive amounts of land-sourced muck that was polluting their beautiful Aegean.
They very wisely decided that the problem required the application of the three "Es": Education, Encouragement and Enforcement. They started with education and that, obviously, is where you come in.
Children are the best messengers
It has been found that the best stage or age of children for receiving and accepting serious moral and behavioural messages is at middle school level – around 11 to 14. So, they were the ones they concentrated their messages on.
Working closely with the Greek education system, the ship owners encouraged lessons that showed clearly both the extent and the causes of the problem. The children realised what they and their parents were doing. Most of them modified their own behaviour and persuaded their parents, elder siblings and relatives likewise.
At the same time HELMEPA worked with the Greek Government to develop a public awareness campaign to encourage the man-in-the-street not to dump his muck in the street. The government was also encouraged to extract substantial penalties from gross polluters; to much more rigorously enforce environmental laws; and, to install effective trash traps in the drains and waterways.
Starting in 1985 everything happened quickly. Even as soon as 1988, as I mentioned earlier, it was noticeable that marine pollution was not worsening. The theories were valid and by the early 1990's the tide of trash was clearly receding.
The tide of trash recedes
The Greek success encouraged the Greeks' not very friendly neighbours in Turkey to follow the same course with respect to the sea both countries share. Bear in mind that 20 years previously, the Greeks and Turks were at war.
Thus was TURMEPA born. It followed a similar course and has been similarly successful. Indeed, on my most recent cruise through the Aegean with my family two years ago we would have been unlucky to see a plastic bottle more than every mile. At the same time we were very well aware that if we dumped the contents of our sewage holding tank into the sea we would be liable for an on-the-spot fine of 7,000 Euros. In default a stretch in prison.
Soon after CYMEPA was started to the same thing cooperatively in the uncooperative condominium of Cyprus which is ruled by both the Greeks and the Turks.
The MEPA concept spreads
The now well proven MEPA concept was on a roll. Then followed Australia, the Philippines, Ukraine, North America and Uruguay. We hope that Thailand and Malaysia will follow soon.
The MEPA concept of applying Education, Encouragement and Enforcement to the marine pollution problem very clearly works. All it needs is motivated people to get it underway.
It does not require a lot of people or even much money. The right kinds of motivated, well-connected people can achieve a lot with very few resources. It's a bit like guerrilla warfare. In fact, I am convinced that a lean and hungry organisation with no bureaucracy and no parasitic passengers can achieve a lot more than a rich one.
Different countries, different cultures
Every country has a different culture so, obviously, the approach has to be tailored to local conditions. The problem, nevertheless, remains the same wherever you are. So does the MEPA plan of attack based on the three "E"s remain constant. The major difference is in the people who support the campaign.
In Greece, as I mentioned, it has been very much the work of the ship owners. In Australia we started mainly with media and government but now AUSMEPA is a healthy mixture of ship owners, media, ship builders, academics and government.
Here in the Philippines it has been the maritime schools, particularly Commodore la Jimenez's, the Navy, and the Coast Guard. In North America the strong supporters are mainly suppliers of services to the maritime industry.
Wherever the MEPAs have flourished there has, however, been one very disappointing aspect to the profile of our supporters.
That is the almost complete absence of any concern or support on the part of marine or coastal tourism operators. They are the ones who benefit most directly and substantially from cleaner seas. Despite continued approaches, they continue to ignore us. A great pity. I hope you can do better with them here in the Philippines.
Maritime Schools : Major influence
Anyway, this is where the Maritime Schools come in. They represent a very large and very important industry in the Philippines. They should equally, have very considerable influence over both the government and the people.
Ultimately, also, the Philippines maritime schools can have considerable influences on a global basis. Your graduates sail the seven seas in massive numbers. They work for ship owners on all continents and visit ports everywhere.
So, you can very effectively spread the word both locally, here in the Philippines, and globally. I am sure that an important component of your courses will involve pollution prevention. MARPOL and local rules will do doubt be at the forefront of your graduates' minds. They will all be aware that seafarers must behave impeccably in an environmental sense.
They, of course, will not be significant marine polluters. The real problem is their parents, siblings, relatives and friends ashore who are carelessly dumping their rubbish wherever they feel like it.
The problem is everywhere
I well remember travelling along Roxas Boulevard recently in a rainstorm. The street was six inches or more deep in fast flowing water. Ordinary cars, like my taxi, could barely move. That really didn't worry me. What upset me, though, was the enormous amount of trash floating along the boulevard. I estimate there were four or five items in every square metre. The most obvious were plastic foam cups, plastic bottles and plastic bags but there was much more. All of it, presumably, would end up in Manila Bay and eventually on the poor invisible beaches such as on Corregidor.
That, really, is the problem. It is a very significant problem here in the Philippines. It is equally significant throughout south-east Asia and through much of the rest of the world.
The very important fact is that the problem can be solved cheaply, quickly and permanently if the MEPA concept is followed. If properly guided, your graduates can help to spread the word in the Philippines and wherever else they travel. They are in a unique position to do so. You are in a unique position to point them in the right direction.
A must for Maritime Schools
Marine Environment Protection is very much a "Must for Maritime Schools". Indeed, I believe it just as important a subject as navigation, seamanship, meteorology, safety or diesel engine maintenance. Protecting the Marine Environment should be on the curriculum at all levels. An important part of that teaching should be to show your students how to get the message across to their fellow, non-seafarer, Filipinos. That is how the MEPA concept works so effectively.
INTERMEPA would be delighted to supply you with starter material from which you can build your own lessons. We have developed some very good educational material in various parts of the world. All of it can be easily adapted to Philippine conditions or translated into Tagalog. You don't need to reinvent the wheel.
I have some brochures here and can easily send more. The important thing is to build on the excellent foundations that Commodore Jimenez and his colleagues in PHILMEPA have established and spread the word both locally and globally. The maritime schools of the Philippines are in a uniquely powerful position to have a very positive environmental effect.
Good luck and thank you for listening to me.
Neil Baird
