Once in a while I see claims that getting rid of older vehicles, with a more stringent focus on Diesel-powered ones, would be somewhat of a solution to the pollution issue. That's totally pointless. Lack of electronic controls make it easy to avoid some maintenance hassles associated to the common-rail engines, most noticeably in harsher environmental conditions or when replacement parts cost would hit the owner harder, and sometimes the lack of a turbocharger may not be something to bother at all due to the diminished risk of an engine runaway caused by oil blow-by through the compressor housing.
The best option to overcome the emissions issue would be prioritizing biofuels, such as biodiesel and maybe even pure vegetable oils according to the technological stage of each engine. And since fish is a popular source of protein not just in the Philippines but also in a lot of other Asian countries, why not resorting to fish liver oils as a feedstock for biodiesel? The alcohol required to brew biodiesel can be sourced from palm as it's usual in Thailand, or coconut as it's also common in Indonesia. Well, coconut may seem a perfect feedstock for biodiesel too, as it may provide not just the fatty acids but some sugar that can be turned into either ethanol or methanol.
Water injection, which blended with some alcohol (usually methanol) to prevent freezing is still quite usual in high-performance applications and have been frequently used in WWII-era fighter aircraft with piston engines, could eventually resort to the water recovered from the aircon system as a supplement to the distilled water + methanol blend more frequently used in specialty applications. At least on open roads with fewer traffic density the fuel-efficiency increase is already noticeable when there is some higher amount of moisture in the air.
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