A study published last year by international rights and environmental watchdog Global Witness contradicts the repeated public defense mounted by San Miguel Corp. president and CEO Ramon S. Ang, who has insisted the New Manila International Airport (NMIA) project bears no responsibility for the recent flooding that submerged large parts of Bulacan and Pampanga.

Ang made his latest defense of the project at a press briefing on 1 September, a day after local residents staged a “Kilos Bulacan” rally to protest the construction which was taking a huge environmental toll.

Ang has argued that geography, not the airport, is to blame for the flooding; that the project is not connected to the river systems; that it does not constitute a reclamation; and that flooding in the area predates the project by decades.

The Global Witness findings, compiled with input from scientists, engineers, and affected residents, undercut each of those positions.

The airport site sits inside a Key Biodiversity Area, a designation reserved for locations considered critical to sustaining the planet’s ecosystems, according to the project’s own impact assessment.

International private sector experts who worked on a report prepared with the Philippine government warned that building the airport there would permanently damage the site’s natural habitats, and that avoiding that damage was only possible by locating the project elsewhere, away from the coastal areas of Manila Bay.

The report found that mitigating the project’s environmental impact would require restoring at least 25,000 hectares of natural habitat, an area roughly 75 times the size of New York’s Central Park.

Global Witness found that some of that damage has already occurred. Hundreds of mangrove trees were destroyed at the site to pave the way for the airport’s construction.

Mangroves store carbon at a rate two to four times greater than mature tropical forests, according to scientific studies cited in the report, and serve as natural barriers against storm surges while filtering pollutants from river water.

“Mangroves are our natural defense,” said Dr. Sandra Catane, a geologist who has studied the project’s environmental and social impact. “They act as barriers against typhoons and storm surges, but they’re being destroyed to make way for this development.”

Their loss also strips fish of breeding grounds and migratory birds of a stopover point, and leaves the coastline more exposed to rising seas and severe weather, the report found.

‘Greenwashing’ not enough

The airport’s developers pledged to plant new mangroves and build a platform for migratory birds to offset the habitat loss, but scientists told Global Witness that SMC was planting the wrong mangrove species, calling the effort “harmful, irresponsible and unscientific.”

The Department of Environment and Natural Resources ordered a halt to the company’s mangrove planting in 2021 while a monitoring team investigated the allegations of malpractice.

Narod Eco, a researcher specializing in disasters and geohazards at the University of the Philippines, told Global Witness he doubted the replanting would do much to reverse the damage.

“It’s just greenwashing. It’s a superficial fix for an irreversible problem,” he said.

The Philippine Coast Guard (PCG), which operates under the Department of Transportation, made a similar assessment. “They’re planting mangroves, but that’s not enough; the majority will still be lost,” a PCG officer said.

SMC told Global Witness it acted on the DENR’s advice to conduct a further analysis of the mangrove site and species selection before resuming its restoration activities, in coordination with government authorities, once the necessary studies were completed.

Global Witness also found that SMC avoided stricter environmental regulation by classifying the airport project as a land development rather than a reclamation, a distinction disputed by multiple experts interviewed for the report.

JanJaap Brinkman, director of Deltares Singapore, a research institute specializing in water management and hydraulic engineering with detailed knowledge of the project, said he raised the concern directly with the Philippine government.

Dr. Murtah Shannon, senior policy advisor at Both ENDS, an independent, non-profit environmental justice organization based in Utrecht, the Netherlands, was more blunt.

“Calling it a land conversion is obviously nonsense because dumping millions of cubic meters of sand into a permanently submerged area is, by any definition, reclamation,” he said, adding: “Saying it is a land development because the area was once above water is like saying reclaimed land is ocean because the area was once under water.”

Beyond definitions

The classification carries consequences beyond semantics. In 2023, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. temporarily suspended reclamation projects nationwide pending a review of their social and environmental impact.

Because the airport project was not classified as a reclamation, it appeared to have proceeded without interruption despite the suspension.

SMC has defended the “land development” label by noting the site was once located above sea level, though scientists say it is now mostly submerged.

The company told Global Witness the area had previously been commercial fishponds and it had valid land titles establishing the site’s original status as land and therefore it denied that the project constituted a reclamation. The company added that it has pursued corrective measures to mitigate or offset the project’s environmental impact.

Displacement undercounted

Global Witness also raised concerns about the process used to consult the communities affected by the project.

Mott MacDonald, the firm that authored the impact assessment showing how the project would meet international financing standards, wrote that such consultations should occur early, be “free of manipulation” and provide “transparent access to project information,” in line with established international standards.

Global Witness’s investigation found what it described as an inadequate and coercive process instead.

In 2023, Global Witness reported community estimates that the airport project would displace 700 families. Mott MacDonald’s own assessment identified only 364 affected families, of which 277 were deemed eligible for compensation — meaning the project may have failed to account for or compensate more than half of the families affected, potentially displacing nearly 3,000 people, according to the report.