point and counterpoint

A cave entrance to the Puerto Princessa Sub­ter­ranean National Park. Is this the next 7 Won­ders of Nature?

There is an inter­est­ing dis­cus­sion about the New 7 Won­ders of Nature online poll over at one of the online com­mu­ni­ties I belong to. The dis­cus­sion began way back when the vot­ing for the 7Won­ders of Nature began; in typ­i­cal Pinoy fash­ion, most of the par­tic­i­pants in the dis­cus­sion called on all Pinoys to vote for all the Philip­pine nom­i­nees. Back then, there were four entries from the Philip­pines, to wit:

1. Puerto Princessa Sub­ter­ranean River National Park
2. Tub­bataha Reef
3. Choco­late Hills
4. Mayon Vol­cano

In case you missed the goings on, here’s a recap: the New 7 Won­ders of Nature is an online con­test ran by the same group that con­ducted the New 7 Won­ders of the World con­test. The pre­vi­ous con­test fea­tured man-made sites, while only nat­ural sites are qual­i­fied in the cur­rent poll. There are three rounds of vot­ing: the first, a “wild­card” vot­ing where any­one in the Inter­net can nom­i­nate a site (sub­ject to the nom­i­nat­ing rules), and the vot­ers pick their favorites. (This is the round that got the most press in local news web­sites.) The top 77 entries in this wild­card vote will move up to the, well, Top 77 round, which will be reviewed by a panel of experts. Only one entry per coun­try is per­mit­ted, except for multi-country sites such as the Dead Sea (which made it to the Top 77). The expert panel will then announce the 28 final­ists (on July 21, 12:07 GMT), and only then would the final vot­ing resume until 2011. The Top 7 out of 28 final­ists will then be declared as the New Seven Won­ders of Nature.

For­tu­nately, the Philip­pines’ top entry for the New 7 Won­ders of Nature, Puerto Princessa Sub­ter­ranean River National Park, made it to the Top 77. But I will not vote for Puerto Princesa…yet. If you read the pre­vi­ous para­graph well, you’ll see why: because I sim­ply can­not vote when vot­ing is closed.

Hav­ing said that, I don’t think Puerto Princessa Sub­ter­ranean River National Park stands a chance to make it in the Top 28. My rea­sons doesn’t have any­thing to do with a lack of “Pinoy Pride ™” (what­ever that means) or patri­o­tism. In this case, real­ity won the argu­ment for me.

First, some prac­ti­cal mat­ters. Too much focus was given to call­ing on Pinoys to vote for all the Philip­pine entries in the first round, on the mis­taken assump­tion that all four entries (then dom­i­nat­ing the top 10) would be declared the New 7 Won­ders of Nature. It is not, and sim­ply will never be. In fact, accord­ing to the 7 Won­ders web­site:

The actual spe­cific rank­ing posi­tion in the top 77 is not con­sid­ered by the Panel of Experts, only the impor­tant fact that a nom­i­nee has made it into the top 77 from the orig­i­nally over 440 par­tic­i­pants, and the Panel of Experts is pre­sented with the same alpha­bet­i­cal list of the top 77 as seen below.

Also:

On 1 Jan­u­ary 2009, only one national nom­i­nee per coun­try will be allowed to pro­ceed: the high­est ranked in the vot­ing on 31 Decem­ber 2008. There­fore until the end of 2008, coun­tries with more than one nom­i­nee will be rac­ing to choose the national rep­re­sen­ta­tive that is allowed to con­tinue into 2009. Nom­i­nees shared by more than one coun­try will remain and con­tinue into 2009.

What hap­pened in this vot­ing stage was that Fil­ipinos were mobi­lized into vot­ing for 4 entries, but in ret­ro­spect we wore our­selves too thin by nom­i­nat­ing every Fil­ipino entry in the polls, and also by giv­ing much more votes to nom­i­nees that have yet to reach the same pop­u­lar­ity as the oth­ers. In the end, we set­tled for a lesser can­di­date in Puerto Princessa Sub­ter­ranean River National Park, which I think not many Pinoys may have even known of until the New 7 Won­ders polls.

At this stage, no one knows, not even me, if Puerto Princessa Sub­ter­ranean River National Park would make it to the Top  77. July 21 is just around the cor­ner, and the whole world will soon know which nat­ural won­ders would make it to as one of the 28 Final­ists. I dug up more infor­ma­tion from the New 7 Won­ders of Nature web­site and found the cri­te­ria for inclu­sion in the Top 28 list. (It used to be 21, but because of pub­lic demand, the orga­niz­ers raised the num­ber to 28.) It would be inter­est­ing to know what would be in the minds of the selec­tion panel ahead of the announcement.

This is what the New 7 Won­ders web­site pre­sented as the cri­te­ria for select­ing the Top 28 Finalists:

1. Unique beauty of the nom­i­nated site;

2. Diver­sity and dis­tri­b­u­tion (accounted for in 7 groups);

3. Eco­log­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance (in terms of either stand-alone eco-systems and/or their sig­nif­i­cance for human beings);

4. His­tor­i­cal legacy (rela­tion that human beings and/or indige­nous pop­u­la­tions have or have had with the site);

5. Geo-location (even dis­tri­b­u­tion of the 28 Offi­cial Final­ists between all continents).

Hav­ing found the list, here are my thoughts on the chances our Philip­pine entry has:

Mayon isn’t the only per­fect cone vol­cano in the world. It never got nom­i­nated to the Top 77…and so was this one

Unique beauty of the nom­i­nated site. Per­son­ally, I had hoped that the Choco­late Hills made it instead as the offi­cial Philip­pine nom­i­nee.  Puerto Princessa Sub­ter­ranean River National Park may be the only one of its kind in the Philip­pines, but I don’t think it’s the only one of its kind. There is an under­ground river in Italy, in Mau­ri­ta­nia, and the longest one can be found in Mex­ico. (Did some­one in the back row shouted Sagada? Thank you.)

Among the nominees,the Choco­late Hills of Bohol may stand a bet­ter choice in this cri­te­ria sim­ply for one fact: it’s the only one of its kind in the world. (I haven’t been to Tub­bataha Reef, and I can’t deter­mine if it stands a chance against the more rec­og­niz­able Great Bar­rier Reef in Aus­tralia, which is also a nominee.)

Con­trast this with the Rice Ter­races of Ifu­gao, which aren’t unique (China, Indone­sia, Nepal, Thai­land and Viet­nam also have their own rice ter­races.) Same with Mount Mayon, which isn’t the only per­fect cone vol­cano in the world (a blog post I found named six other per­fect cone vol­ca­noes besides Mayon. Hav­ing said that, I could only won­der how come Mount Fuji never made it to the Top 77.)

Diver­sity and dis­tri­b­u­tion (accounted for in the 7 groups). I’m not a biol­o­gist, so my layman’s under­stand­ing of this cri­te­ria is that the nom­i­nees should have the most to present in terms of bio­di­ver­sity. This would mean, among oth­ers, a vari­ety of flora and fauna thriv­ing in the site’s ecosys­tem. The Choco­late Hills have the tar­sier and the var­i­ous flora found in the hills’ forests, while Tub­bataha and Puerto Princesa Park has their teem­ing marine flora and fauna. Since Mayon Vol­cano is already sur­rounded by human inhab­i­ta­tion on the foot of its slope, I can’t say if it would have had a chance under this criteria.

Eco­log­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance (in terms of either stand-alone eco-systems and/or their sig­nif­i­cance for human beings. Same rea­sons as the pre­vi­ous cri­te­ria. Three of our orig­i­nal entries (includ­ing Puerto Princesa’s) have a good case in this cri­te­ria. 

His­tor­i­cal legacy (rela­tion that human beings and/or indige­nous pop­u­la­tions have or have had with the site). There has been much dis­cus­sion about how the orig­i­nal Philip­pine entries rep­re­sent the best of the Philip­pines nat­ural resources, but on the cri­te­ria of his­tor­i­cal legacy, there is much left to be said. I found lit­tle dis­cus­sion (if any) about whether (say) Tub­bataha became a focal point in the devel­op­ment of sea-faring indige­nous com­mu­ni­ties in the Philippines.

The other nom­i­nees in the Top 77 list have strong points in this cri­te­ria. The Dead Sea  is very much a part of Bib­li­cal cul­ture and also of the ancient his­tory of Pales­tine. The Ama­zon River has sus­tained indige­nous tribes how thou­sands, per­haps even ten thou­sands of years and is at the fore­front of South Amer­i­can cul­ture. Greek’s Mount Olym­pus, of course, should be famil­iar to those who have encoun­tered Greek mythol­ogy in school and to those who have seen the Olympics, at least on TV.

It isn’t clear to me if three of our orig­i­nal four entries have sim­i­lar lega­cies. Mayon Vol­cano could have an advan­tage in this cri­te­ria; the ubiq­ui­tous image of the ruins of Cag­sawa Church with Mt. Mayon in the back­ground demon­strates this. (Unlike Mt. Pom­peii, how­ever, Mt. Mayon doesn’t have its own ver­sion of Pom­peii, with its exten­sive archeology.)

Geo-location (even dis­tri­b­u­tion of the 28 Offi­cial Final­ists between all con­ti­nents). This one proves to be the hard­est to pre­dict. It’s safe to assume that the orga­niz­ers of the New Seven Won­ders of Nature are think­ing of pro­vid­ing an equi­table bal­ance of entries across the six con­ti­nents (Antarc­tica doesn’t count). Ide­ally, this means that each con­ti­nent would have at most 4–6 entries. In order for Puerto Princessa Sub­ter­ranean River National Park, this would mean that the expert panel would put it on a higher rank­ing such that it would meet the cut-off for Asian entries. (I haven’t checked, though, if the Top 77 is evenly dis­trib­uted across 6 continents.)

But con­sider this: in the first incar­na­tion of the New Seven Won­ders sur­vey, Aus­tralia and Africa only received one nom­i­nees each. 7 final­ists are from Europe, 6 entries from Asia, while 5 are from the Amer­i­cas. (The Pyra­mids of Giza was con­sid­ered an hon­orary New Won­der and was exempted from the vot­ing on the indis­putable fact that it’s the only sur­viv­ing mem­ber of the orig­i­nal Seven Won­ders of the World.) The impli­ca­tions of this kind of “even dis­tri­b­u­tion” is best dis­cussed in another topic, but suf­fice it now to say that a strictly even dis­tri­b­u­tion might seem unlikely. (Besides, how do you evenly divide 28 by 6?) It’s def­i­nitely a long shot for our Philip­pine entry…but so it is for the 76 oth­ers as well

Hav­ing said all these, I took a look at the Top 77 list. The other con­tenders are sim­ply too strong to ignore:

1. Ama­zon River (mul­ti­ple coun­tries) — one of the longest river sys­tems in the world
2. Angel Falls (Venezuela) — world’s tallest waterfall
3. Ata­cama Desert (Chile) — world’s dri­est desert
4. Black For­est (Ger­many) — scenic for­est in Ger­many, culture-rich
5. Dead Sea (Israel/Jordan/Palestine) — which…is self-explanatory
6. Galá­pa­gos Islands (Ecuador) — famous for Charles Darwin’s explo­ration, which led to the writ­ing of  The Ori­gin of Species”
7. Grand Canyon (USA) — most rec­og­niz­able nat­ural land­mark in the US
8. Great Bar­rier Reef (Aus­tralia) — largest reef in the world
9. Matterhorn/Cervino (Italy/Switzerland) — rep­re­sent­ing the best of the Alps
10. Mount Kil­i­man­jaro (Tan­za­nia) — famous for its unusual snow-topped peak
11. Mount Olym­pus (Greece) — tra­di­tional home of the ancient Greek Gods
12. Vesu­vius (Italy) — the vol­cano respon­si­ble for destroy­ing the ancient city of Pompeii

Given the promi­nence of these land­marks, I will really be sur­prised if none of them, not one, would make it to the finals.

So..given that Puerto Princessa Sub­ter­ranean River National Park is up in a tight com­pe­ti­tion with these land­marks, I don’t see myself vot­ing for it. I’d give it a slim chance of mak­ing it to the Top 28. Will I be proven wrong? We’ll find out soon; July 21 is just a week away. And if it makes it to the Top 28? We’ll see