DUBAI: As discussion about the controversial plan to construct New Centennial Water Source-Kaliwa Dam in Tanay, Rizal heats up, Haribon Foundation, an environmentalist group, urged the government not to proceed with signing an Php18.72-billion loan deal with China for the project, citing its adverse impact on the Sierra Madre mountain range’s rain forest and biodiversity.
Maria Belinda de la Paz, Haribon chief operating officer, in a statement said: “We call on the government to refrain from the signing of the loan agreement for the construction of the Kaliwa Dam and instead protect and rehabilitate degraded watersheds supplying potable water to Metro Manila.”
“The construction of the multi-billion peso Kaliwa Dam Project will not only have devastating effects on people’s lives, it will also ravage the homes of thousands of threatened wildlife species in the Sierra Madre mountain forests including the Critically Endangered Philippine Eagle,” she added.
Sierra Madre is considered as one area with the most biodiversity and the largest remaining tract of rainforest in the country, according to various experts.
According to Haribon, which apparently did its homework on the matter, the Kaliwa Watershed Forest Reserve, in which the Kaliwa Dam is to be constructed, was declared a forest reserve by Proclamation No. 573 on June 22, 1968
Separately, Proclamation No. 1636 issued on April 18, 1977 declared a portion of the watershed as National Park and Wildlife Sanctuary, the group added.
The environmental group noted that the Kaliwa Watershed, which encompasses approximately 28,000 hectares of forests as well as ancestral and agricultural land, is home to various threatened wildlife such as the Endangered Northern Philippine Hawk-eagle, the Philippine Brown Deer, the Philippine Warty Pig, the Vulnerable Northern Rufous Hornbill, the Critically Endangered Philippine Eagle, and restricted-range birds of the Luzon Endemic Bird Area, all of which are found nowhere else on the planet.
