The Philippines’ western island province of Palawan tops tourists’ bucket lists for its picturesque main destination, El Nido. This small fishing town of 50,000 residents is located within the larger El Nido-Taytay Managed Resource Protected Area.
Known for crystal-clear azure waters, dramatic limestone cliffs, and exceptional diving spots, El Nido has received numerous accolades from international travel magazines and heavy promotion in social media. In 2023, Palawan recorded 1.5 million visitors, with a third visiting El Nido, generating revenues of 57.2 billion pesos (US$1 billion at the exchange rate at the time).
However, as in other Southeast Asian destinations and beyond, this popularity has come at a cost, including coastal water contamination. High faecal coliform levels in the sea around El Nido have persisted despite the construction of a new sewage treatment plant and efforts to curb illegal tourism-related businesses, new government data show.
Now, with tourism at an all-time high, authorities are scrambling to hook more businesses and residences up to the system, and grappling with how to balance the economic boon of tourism with the costs it imposes on the marine environment.
In the past five years, from 2019 to 2023, faecal coliform levels, particularly in the coastal waters off the El Nido town centre, where residences and tourism establishments are concentrated, have consistently exceeded the safe recreational swimming limit of 100 most probable number (MPN) per 100 millilitres. That’s according to data the Philippines’ Department of Environment and Natural Resources recently shared with Mongabay.
With the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 halting tourism and the local government opening its new sewage and solid waste treatment plant in 2022, faecal coliform levels decreased, but not drastically, and then rebounded in 2023 when tourism restrictions were fully lifted, the government data show.
Meanwhile, the island destinations located kilometres away from the town centre that tourists frequent continue to meet water quality standards and are deemed safe for swimming.
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Platforms like Instagram often depict an idealised, ‘pristine’ nature, creating a hyperreality that obscures local contexts. This portrayal fuels tourist arrivals and shapes expectations, pressuring local development to conform to these images.
Wolfram Dressler, professor, University of Melbourne
Social media-driven popularity
El Nido’s rise to fame and subsequent environmental degradation are in part attributable to the heavy promotion of the town’s coastal tourism offerings on social media platforms like Instagram at the decade’s onset, said Wolfram Dressler, a political ecology professor at the University of Melbourne, Australia.
“Social media in general, with Instagram being a major one, is not only a driver [of coastal environment destruction] but an important one,” he told Mongabay.
Dressler’s conclusion is based on a study he and three co-authors published in Geoforum in 2023. It described how, between 2012 and 2015, the government and tourism businesses used social media to promote El Nido, despite being poorly prepared in terms of policies and facilities to manage the influx of visitors and their environmental footprint.
In 2016, Instagram’s algorithm began prioritising content that generated engagement, such as images of exotic destinations. This shift pressured the local government and businesses to heavily post filtered images of scenic El Nido spots, drawing yet more tourists, the paper noted.
“Platforms like Instagram often depict an idealised, ‘pristine’ nature, creating a hyperreality that obscures local contexts,” Dressler said. “This portrayal fuels tourist arrivals and shapes expectations, pressuring local development to conform to these images.”
The study, which analyzed tourism policy documents and social media posts, and interviewed local actors, described a host of environmental problems in El Nido.
Among these were the spread of illegal tourist hotels and restaurants along the coastline, and the resulting sewage contamination of ground and coastal waters. Also included were the proliferation of illegal logging for tourism infrastructure in El Nido and a consequent alarming spate of violence against local forest defenders.
Randi Alampay, an associate professor at the University of the Philippines’ Asian Institute of Tourism in Quezon City, said social media allows destinations in developing economies like the Philippines to compete against rivals with larger advertising budgets. But El Nido’s case suggests that “the Instagram genie isn’t always benevolent,” he said.
“It granted El Nido’s wish for increased tourism arrivals. But it didn’t mention that these would come with such a cost. And there’s no putting that genie back in the bottle,” Alampay told Mongabay.
Government actions
The coastal water quality issue in El Nido first drew significant government attention during the 2018 closure of Boracay, another top Philippine destination, over similar environmental concerns. El Nido faced the threat of closure as well, but the national government ultimately reconsidered after local businesses appealed, promising to collaborate with the local government to rehabilitate the town.
Immediate measures included the removal of numerous tourist establishments along the coastal easement zone, a 3-meter (10-foot) strip along the water where building is prohibited, and the introduction of daily visitor limits for the most popular island destinations off the town center.
When the pandemic hit in 2020, the Philippines closed its borders to tourists, providing an opportune window for the construction of El Nido’s first sewage and solid waste treatment plant. The facility opened in December 2022, as the country gradually eased travel restrictions and began welcoming tourists once again.
However, the new policies and the treatment facility seemed to have little effect in reducing fecal coliform levels to safe standards, according to the government data.
John Gil Ynzon, chief of the provincial government’s water office, which manages the facility’s operations, attributed this primarily to the low rate of connections among households, rather than to the effectiveness of the facility, which on average receives only half of its daily maximum sewage capacity of 2,400 cubic meters (about 84,800 cubic feet).
As of January 2025, out of 900 households in the four major villages comprising El Nido’s town centre, only 30 (or 3.3 per cent) are connected to the system despite the low fixed monthly rate of 298 pesos (US$5) per house.
Ynzon said many of these residences operate waste-generating, home-based tourism businesses, such as bed and breakfasts, travel agencies and convenience stores, without local permits.
A water office survey showed that 95 per cent of these households use bottomless septic tanks. “Being bottomless … this makes it difficult to capture the wastewater through pipelines, even if they are installed, as it is more likely to infiltrate the soil below,” Ynzon told Mongabay.
He said large hotels and restaurants are required by a local ordinance to connect to the system as a prerequisite for obtaining a municipal business permit, but residences are not, making their connection optional unless they operate a business. “This lack of regulatory leverage led us to decide to subsidise the replacement of residential toilets, lavatories and septic tanks, with the government covering all costs,” he said.
The local government allocated 40 million pesos (US$685,000) in November 2024 to fund the replacements for the first 100 households, with construction slated for completion by April 2025. These households are located in areas identified as major contributors to the contamination.
Any future expansion would likely involve extending the pipeline network to areas where tourism developments and communities have emerged but were not included in the original sewage system design and are now significantly contributing to the wastewater problem.
“The treatment plant itself can still accommodate the additional load. The only limitation we have is in the sanitary pipeline network, so we are considering an expansion to extend sanitary lines to these locations,” Ynzon said.
The local government aims to achieve full coverage of households within the next two to three years, depending on the availability of government funding, while full coverage for commercial establishments is expected by the end of this year.
Ynzon said he expected this would bring the water quality up to standard. As of January 2025, during the business permit renewal period, 551 of the 670 commercial establishments, or 82 per cent, are now connected to the system.
Post-pandemic tourism woes
Sustainable tourism planner Chen Reyes-Mencias of Manila-based Blue Water Consultancy said effective planning is crucial to protect coastal destinations from tourism impacts. But she noted that the pandemic hiatus wasn’t used effectively enough to prepare for the post-pandemic tourist influx.
Reyes-Mencias said the Philippine government “up to this point only measures success using economic indicators — environment and social integrity are not in the equation.” This, she said, could revive old issues.
“Once the tourists arrive again in droves, we tend to focus only on the economic gain and not on the impact on the environment,” she told Mongabay via email. “No matter how much funds you put into rehabilitating a place, you cannot bring it back to its original state. It’s impossible.”
Meanwhile, government tourism offices, tour agencies and resorts continue overpromoting El Nido’s attractions on social media to capitalise on the recovery, despite unresolved water quality concerns and associated health risks, including diarrhoea, for both tourists and residents. El Nido’s municipal tourism office and the Philippine environment department didn’t respond to Mongabay’s multiple requests for comments before publication.
Alampay, the academic specialising in tourism, challenged El Nido and similar destinations to use social media’s power to influence tourists toward more responsible, sustainable travel.
Dressler urged the Philippine Department of Tourism (DOT) to “put the brakes on rapid over-tourism development” and strengthen efforts for responsible tourism, including promoting waste management strategies, and enforcing zoning and building height limits. “I don’t think Instagram can do anything, but the DOT and visitors can,” he said.
This story was published with permission from Mongabay.com.
