Tourists are back at this Instaworthy Philippine town, but can its sewage system keep up?

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 ($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 fecal 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, fecal coliform levels, particularly in the coastal waters off the El Nido town center, where residences and tourism establishments are concentrated, have consistently exceeded the safe recreational swimming limit of 100 most probable number (MPN) per 100 milliliters. 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, fecal 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 kilometers away from the town center that tourists frequent continue to meet water quality standards and are deemed safe for swimming.

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 prioritizing 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