Agencies bungle air clean-up program

A multi-million-dollar program to improve air quality in Metro Manila has been stalled after implementing agencies canceled most of its project components.

In its completion report for the Metro Manila Air Quality Improvement Sector Development Program, the Asian Development Bank rated the level of performance between 1999 and 2007 as partly satisfactory and partly successful in reducing the ambient air pollution.

“Despite nearly a decade of implementation, such cancellations made the program less meaningful as far as its objectives are concerned,” it said.

The components included ambient air quality monitoring network, outsourcing of stack emissions measurement, road rehabilitation, traffic management and engineering, anti-smoke belching campaign, motor vehicle emission testing equipment procurement and public health monitoring.

“During the program’s initial stages, it achieved eliminating lead from gasoline. Nevertheless, the remaining objectives to achieve cleaner ambient air in the Metro Manila airshed did not materialize,” the report noted.

ADB criticized the Environment and Natural Resources along with the Metro Manila Development Authority, Transportation and Public Works particularly on the condition of Edsa.

The report seeks to push policy reforms focusing on the metropolitan airshed, where pollution is heavy.

The program began sometime in 1999 amid claims that the concentration of dangerous pollutants in Metro Manila has reached critical levels beyond what human health can tolerate. These pollutants came mainly from vehicle emissions and industrial processes.

While the effort led to the elimination of lead from the atmosphere when oil distributors started selling unleaded gasoline in 2003, it failed to reduce other air pollutants such as sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, and ozone and volatile organic compounds such as toluene, benzene and xylene among other particulates.

The ADB lent $200 million to the government to support the policy reforms while the Overseas Economic Cooperation Fund of Japan raised $170 million.

ADB also provided $25 million in facility loan and $71 million in investment loan.

The Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency extended a mixed credit of about $4.5 million.

For its part, the government raised $45.6 million in counterpart funding.

The report notes that MMDA and member localities have abandoned anti-belching work while the agency’s geographic information system remains inoperative—two components that received failing marks.

The ADB observed that the Environment office, main project implementor, had different chiefs, bogging down expected results.

“The change of the department’s secretary five times during the program period of eight years had a significant impact on progress. It delayed the program initially during its first three years, but substantial progress was possible in 2003,” it said.

The dispute between the department and project contractors also slowed the program’s progress.

“Apart from such management changes, the DENR did not exert adequate efforts to bring the program back on track, despite ADB’s continuous facilitation to resolve disputes,” it said.

Also, the change of management at the Transportation department and at the Land Transportation Office was likewise counterproductive.

“Ultimately, the motor vehicle inspection system is still not fully operational and is without any assurance of sustainability,” the report said.

For Public Works, the ADB said the metropolitan thoroughfare was in a dire state.

“Even today, Edsa is in a rapidly deteriorating state, contributing to lower travel speeds, more congestion, and thereby more emissions,” it said.

“Thus, all these parties demonstrated insufficient integrity and ownership toward the program,” the completion report said.

While the MMDA was responsible for two key components that could have substantially helped improve air quality, ADB said the agency failed to show keen interest.

The report also said the ADB itself was only partly successful as a lender for designing the program with various subcomponents and with little regard for the capacity of the implementing agencies.

“The program’s complexity imposed many difficulties for ADB during implementation. Based on this, the performance of ADB was partly satisfactory.”

The report concludes that sustaining the program is less likely since the Environment agency has no adequate permanent staff positions while air quality monitoring is non-functioning.–Roderick T. dela Cruz, Manila Standard Today