Booboos in the air
The Philippine Star
02/24/2003

Environmentalists are hailing the Clean Air Act (CAA) as a landmark law. But since it was made effective, certain flaws are emerging, pointing to the fact that the CAA——for all its good intentions——is not easy to implement, and definitely an expensive exercise.

The World Bank (WB) estimates that the country needs to spend about P25 billion in the next 10 years to implement the program. In contrast, Congress has appropriated only P750 million yearly for the CAA implementation during the same period.

Aside from money problems, there are flaws in the CAA. Of course, the usual excuse is that you can’t have a perfect law on the first try, more so if it is to clean our air.

When our lawmakers focused on the emotionally popular issues and glossed over critical pre-requisites to improve the quality of air, a number of big booboos were to be expected. Apparently, some of these essential issues overlooked or glossed over were not politically expedient.

Tricycle drivers ignored

For one, the law is so cowardly in not saying outright that two-stroke motorcycles will be disallowed. It only raised the emission standards of motorcycle engines to levels that technically cannot be achieved by any two-stroke motorcycle engine.

As it is, the Philippines is way behind its neighbors in shifting toward cleaner and more fuel-efficient four-stroke motorcycles. In Vietnam, all motorcycles plying the metropolis and the countryside use four-stroke motorcycle engines. It’s 85 percent in China, 82 percent in Thailand, and 60 percent in India.

In contrast, the share of new four-stroke motorcycles in the country is only 25 percent. Being banned or discouraged in other countries, two-stroke motorcycles are being dumped into our domestic market. Importation is not restricted since there is no law that explicitly says this type of motorcycle engines will no longer be allowed.

What you now have is a social problem. Owners of two-stroke tricycles have made it clear that it won’t be a walk in the park for the Department of Environment and Natural Resources when it enforces the air emission test requirement. And they don’t intend to change to four-stroke engines without sufficient incentives for them and the affected tricycle drivers.

After a very noisy and traffic-snarling protest march, the two-stoke motorcycle engine owners and drivers were given a reprieve. A law that was crafted based on what was emotionally popular had to give way to emotional outcries and demands.

The law should have been more specific on how to cushion the impact on the country’s noisy tricycle drivers as their two-stroke engines are phased out and replaced with four-stroke engines. Incentives such as financing plans would have paved the way for the social acceptability of the new level of emissions for motorcycle engines.

As it is, the setting up of strict levels of emissions is useless since it could not immediately be implemented.

Expensive fuels down the drain

At present, we are paying more for gasoline because of the stringent aromatic and benzene levels provided by the CAA. The irony of it all, however, is that we are buying more costly gasoline without the benefit of reducing the volume of pollutants from motor engine emissions. The reason for this idiotic and wasteful use of expensive gasoline is the failure to mandate the use of catalytic converters in motor vehicles.

As I mentioned in previous columns, an air emission watch a year from now will show that we still have the same amount, or maybe even more, of carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides and particulate matters in the air we breath. After we were forced to shell out additional pesos per liter for "cleaner" gasoline, what we have are tears in our eyes as we think of all that money going down the drain.

Experience worldwide shows that installing catalytic converters in motor vehicles will substantially improve air quality by eliminating the massive emitted pollutants. The use of catalytic converters is now mandatory in many countries in the Asia-Pacific such as Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, Japan, South Korea and Singapore.

It is worth noting that while Singapore for instance imposes less stringent standards for aromatics and benzene compared to Philippine standards, Singapore is able to meet its standards for clean air because their vehicles are required to use catalytic converters.

If the government did not have the political will to require all existing vehicles on the road to have catalytic converters, then it would have been a simpler matter to require the installation of the device in all newly registered vehicles.

Effective and consistent enforcement questionable

Under the CAA, vehicle owners are required to undergo emissions testing with authorized testing centers before registration with the Land Transportation Office (LTO). This is an easy thing to do since vehicle owners simply "cheat" by having their maintenance check-ups just before testing.

After registration, most vehicles, particularly those for hire and public use, are not anymore subjected to proper maintenance, and sooner or later do not meet the emissions standards.

It does not help that DENR has sporadic roadside inspections that are not effective to enforce strict compliance of the law. As it is, smoke belchers are hardly ever apprehended, more so taken off the road.

Despite the long years of anti-smoke belching campaign, there has not been one single effective solution to the pollution caused by diesel-fed vehicles such as buses, jeepneys, utility vehicles and trucks. Just try driving through EDSA early in the morning. The haze and smog is palpable in the air that you would prefer to suspend breathing.

Other options that could be looked into to improve the effectiveness of enforcement are public disclosure of known polluters, polluted areas and performance of regulators, including imposing sanctions for local government units that are lax in apprehending polluters in their jurisdiction.

The CAA can only be fully enforced if the DENR and other core agencies responsible for air quality management such as the Environmental Management Bureau, the Department of Health, and the Department of Energy are provided with adequate resources in terms of personnel, equipment and technical know-how.

One of the solutions offered is to outsource some of these technical functions to experts in the private sector and other non-government organizations. Moreover, government should come up with reliable monitoring systems to ensure the law is followed.

A sure way of achieving excellence is recognizing booboos and doing something about them. The issue is no longer whether we want quality air. The challenge is to meet the common concern for quality air at the most practical, cost effective and implementable way.

One may have the most stringent standards in the world, but all of this will be for naught if meeting it is not workable or downright impossible.

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