I grew up in the heart of the Philippines, on the provincial island of Marinduque. Growing up surrounded by fauna and flora, I found solace in nature. Here, I feel most at peace: embracing nature’s breeze, swimming in vast seas, and watching birds up the trees.

I still vividly remember spending mornings in the river with my lolo and lola. While they washed the laundry by the riverbank, I would swim and pretend to be a mermaid. Now, elders warn against swimming in the river due to unabated sand mining, riverbanks are now collapsing and riverbeds are deepening. 

Beaches are disappearing too due to seabed quarrying. In the process of dredging sands and minerals from the seabed, marine ecosystems face danger. 

One place we fondly hold is Dapdap Beach, only 15 minutes away from home. I remember when Dapdap was bustling with locals, especially on weekends and holidays. Fisherboats line the coast during the day. Families set makeshift picnics with food to share. When I visited on Easter, Dapdap was lifeless besides some fisher boats on the rocky, easternmost part of the coast where the mangroves grow.

Unlike other seafronts that have been commercialized as tourist destinations, Dapdap is a harbor to fisherfolks and home to mangroves. On its coast sprawls a grassy mountain where cows and goats graze. 

Now, the mountain has been carved in half. What was once a majestic hectare of land, is now hollow and almost leveled. The sandy shore is now a construction site for a road that does not seem to lead anywhere.

Traversing the province’s 119-km circumferential road shows more mountains desolated for needless road widening. From 2019 to 2021, under the “Build, Build, Build” program, the provincial government spent P405 million on roadworks. Last year, Marinduque requested road projects costing P943 million from the national government, supposedly to spur development and growth.

Roads are indeed necessary for development. However, this development comes at a grave cost—environmental degradation. These short-sighted developmental projects are brazenly depleting our natural resources, leaving the province more vulnerable to disasters. With an economy largely dependent on agriculture and fishery, the destruction of the environment spells the destruction of the people’s livelihood, too.

The province has already been victim to one of the worst mining disasters in Philippine history. In 1993, the Marcopper Mining Corporation’s open mining pit spilled 1.6 million cubic tons of toxic waste, flooding villages, killing children, and displacing families. In 2022, a trial court finally held the mining corporation liable for the disaster however, victims remain without compensation and the contaminated river of Mogpog and Boac remains dead to this day.

Since the mining disaster, Marinduqueños have campaigned against mining and for legislation to declare Marinduque as a mining-free zone and deny all mining applications in Marinduque. However, the demand for quarry resources has only increased since the “Build, Build, Build” program. In 2021, Rodrigo Duterte lifted the ban on mining agreements, allowing massive extraction of quarry resources. Under Ferdinand Marcos’s rebranded infrastructure plan “Build, Better, More,” I can only expect that the environmental plunder is extolled the same way. 

When the breeze is marred in pollution, seas are churned as quarries, and trees are no longer sanctuaries, there is no solace nor peace. There is only resistance and ominous worry for the future we will inherit. The future that we seek is unattainable in a world that only values the environment for ways it can be exploited. ●