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Saving Mehan Gardens

M. L. Tan

The Heritage Conservation Society (HCS) is organizing a different kind of picnic this morning at Mehan Gardens on Arroceros Street. The picnic, scheduled from 8 to 10 AM, will include a serenade dedicated to Manila mayor Lito Atienza, appealing to him to reconsider his decision to convert the Mehan Gardens into a campus for the City Colleges of Manila.

Appropriately, today is World Environment Day, with the Mehan Gardens issue challenging us to think of environmentalism both in terms of nature and history.

I wouldn’t be surprised if some readers aren’t aware of where Mehan Gardens is. This is the area near the Manila City Hall, more or less at the foot of Quezon Bridge that connects into Quiapo. In the past it was a center for the city’s social life. The area includes Metropolitan Theater, one of the finest art deco structures in Asia dating back to the 1930s. The theater has been abandoned for years now, unused because of bureaucratic snags and squabbling.

Mehan Gardens itself has a long history. It was first established as the Jardin Botanico in 1858. The Americans renamed it Mehan Gardens and built a zoo to go with the botanical gardens. There was also a flower market on a small street between the gardens and the theater. The zoo and botanical gardens eventually closed down but Mehan Gardens continued to be a site for public events until the 1970s, even renamed at one point to Sining Kayumanggi.

Although it fell into disuse through the years, Mehan Gardens has continued to play a crucial role in the city’s ecology. Biologists point out that plants, especially trees, are the planet’s lungs. Mehan Gardens, located at one of Manila’s major thoroughfares, works with nearby Luneta in helping to prevent the city from choking on its own waste.

The neglect of Mehan Gardens and now, its possible destruction, reminds us as well of how environmentalism has become so distorted in the Philippines. Politicians of all stripes talk about environmental conservation but in reality, environmentalism rarely goes beyond cleanliness and beautification campaigns that neither clean nor beautify. We’re just too quick about destroying green spaces and building tacky malls that then try to imitate nature with plastic plants and artificial waterfalls.

I’m going to detour away from the Mehan Gardens issue and point out how else we’ve distorted environmentalism. Besides those cleanliness campaigns, we equate environmentalism with "nature-tripping" which often end up destroying the environment. Mt. Apo, for example, has been closed down to mountain climbers because caretakers need to clean up all the garbage left by so-called nature-loving climbers.

Let’s go to another example – the dolphin and whale show at Subic. Parents take their kids to that show thinking this is one way of developing environmental awareness. But environmentalists have pointed out that such shows actually violate principles of environmental conservation. Lori Tan, a member of the Inter-agency Task Force on Marine Mammal Conservation has pointed out that bottlenose dolphins and false killer whales are not endangered species and that there is no justification for keeping them in captivity. Many other questions have been raised such as the safety of transferring the animals to Subic and keeping them in captivity. Despite these protests, the project has been allowed to proceed.

The whale and dolphin shows reflect a fatal flaw in our distorted environmentalism – our messianic tendencies. We talk of "saving the environment" when in reality we continue to assert our domination over nature. Keeping dolphins in captivity and having them perform are just like those nature trips that end up littering the environment – we’re still unable to recognize that our compulsion to dominate nature is at the root of its destruction.

Environmentalism recognizes the value of each plant and each animal in the way it contributes to the survival of all other species. When one specie dwindles or becomes extinct, the entire system suffers. Scientists point out, for example, that among the many thousands of plant species that have become extinct, there may have been potential cures for many human diseases, including cancer, maybe even HIV/AIDS.

This takes us back to the issue of Mehan Gardens. You take away that green area and you deprive many animals -- birds, insects for example – of their habitat. The losses aren’t just biological –- I’m also talking about the links that are severed among human beings, among generations. How do you teach the young the value of conservation and recycling when we insist on demolishing the past? And how can we talk about nurturing the human spirit when the only recreational activities we have to offer young people are the theme parks’ thrill rides or the games in computer arcades where you blast spaceships off the screen?

Many years ago the NGO I worked with we had a Dutch volunteer who was helping us with agricultural projects. I never forgot one of his first sessions with the office on environmentalism: "Don’t talk about saving the earth. We can blow each other up with nuclear bombs, poison each other with pesticides but the planet will survive." It was a good point. Even if humans go the way of dinosaurs, the planet earth stays. Maybe the cockroaches – one of the longest surviving species on earth – will inherit that parched earth, going their merry way minus those pesky human beings with their Earth Days and World Environment Days.