Wobbly linchpin

Plan ahead, Confucius would drill into his students, otherwise, you’ll find trouble at your doorstep.

“Plan for the next 30 years,” civic leader Roberto Aboitiz told Cebu Rotarians in a 21st-century replay of counsel from this Asian sage (557-479 BC). “The future does not belong to small, unprepared, incoherent and divided cities… If we don’t create a vision, we’ll be bypassed.”

Cebu is the linchpin for the country’s second largest metro area, where over 2.13 million men, women and children are crammed into 13 cities and towns. It is port for 80 percent of the country’s shipping firms. The second largest number of international flights takes off from Mactan.

Births, migrants and rapid economic change are shoving borders outwards. Ripley may not swallow this, but Cebu never crafted a long-range plan.

“Urbanization has been rapid,” notes Neeraj Jain of the Asian Development Bank. “Planning processes, however, lag.” The result is fragmented 19th-century style fiefdoms in Cebu—and elsewhere.

Pin much of the blame for poor urban management on government, National Institute for Policy Studies’ Lambert Ramirez told Time magazine. He was then salvaging appliances from his home that Typhoon “Ondoy” wrecked. “There’s no coordinated policy for cleaning up garbage. There’s no political will to get even simple things done.”

Local officials often bicker over perk and pomp while their constituents stew in garbage and disease. The “Nimby” (“Not In My Backyard”) syndrome persists. Cebu blocks jeepneys from next door Mandaue. En route to landfills, Cebu garbage trucks are flagged down in Mandaue.

Long-term planning is often the first victim of short-term election plans. Ask Metro Manila’s officials. The need is for leaders who, as “descendants of the past, nonetheless, act as  parents of the future.” These peer beyond 2013 polls and face up to critical issues from solid waste disposal, flood control to health and nutrition.

Many are skeptical, admitted the Ramon Aboitiz Foundation president. They’re seared by a “scorched-earth” experience. Whenever a new administration takes over, even sound policies and projects are jettisoned.

Can officials, members of civil society and business groups talk to each other? You don’t need a crystal ball for that. But that would help craft a shared vision, embed the process of strategic thinking and development planning.

“Some say long-term plans take too long,” Aboitiz noted. But when do we start?… I am optimistic we can change the way we think, change the way we plan.”

Cebu has many assets, including good schools, dynamic civic groups and modern private hospitals. But it lacks the ability to spur and handle growth. “Twenty kilometers of travel shouldn’t take an hour,” he added. But it does.

Potholed roads stud this “Queen City of the South,” which is short of water, lacks drainage, and is swamped by periodic floods from denuded watersheds. Former Mayor Tomas Osmeña’s 296-hectare reclamation project is treeless 10 years after it started. Public medical facilities are shoddy.

Coddled by politicians, squatter colonies proliferate on contaminated rivers and creeks, the source of their water—and gastroenteritis. Repayments for yen loans, until 2025, hobble Cebu’s capacity to be a pacesetter for the future. About 40,000 minor girls have been trafficked into prostitution.

These seem to be dead-end problems. Paradoxically, they offer a “strategic opportunity” to break free from obsolete geographical boundaries and curdled mindsets, stressed Aboitiz. Take the long view. “Success is no accident. It is a planned journey….This is our future.”

“Nothing is ever done in this world until men are prepared to kill one another if it is not done,” George Bernard Shaw wrote. Indeed, there are welcome metro area success stories.

Vancouver untangled initial boundary turf-guarding by Canadian towns. Curitiba in Brazil stitched together 25 municipalities to make elbow room for residents. Shanghai, diffused the impact of urban concentration by creating 10 suburban districts.

An informal group with an integrated goal for Cebu is now trying to provide a forum for stakeholders, Aboitiz said. The informal Metro Cebu Development Coordinating Board (MCDCB) is probing areas where consensus is possible. These could serve as stepping stones to untangle more prickly issues.

Forward planning would reverse today’s piece-meal reaction to interlocking crises. Six IBM executives from Germany, the United States, Italy and Sweden will “serve as partners in the program.”

One hopes this initiative sets a better record than others. Davao’s city council created a Task Force on Climate Change—and promptly forgot about it. That task force never met.

Yet, there is a broader understanding of security being anchored in cooperation beyond narrow legal borders.

Rep. Rufus Rodriguez, for example, has suggested a law (House Bill 5908) to get Bukidnon, Misamis Oriental and Lanao to co-manage the waters that cascade from the towering Mount Kitanglad in Bukidnon and Kalatungan range in Lanao down Cagayan de Oro river. That would prevent floods from smashing everything on its way to Macajalar Bay.

The MegaCebu initiative offers a chance to break free from today’s policy stalemate. The alternative is for the country’s second largest metropolis to steadily crumble.

Stop fixing the blame for the past, John F. Kennedy counseled. “Let us accept instead our own responsibility for the future.”

(Email: juanlmercado@gmail.com)