WATER may determine the future of Asia. It may even turn crimson red, if the 700 million people in one of the world’s largest group of islands floating on a body of water continue to go thirsty.
This is the flow of thought of pundits and former government leaders of Asia Society in its report on water.
“Water as a resource is taken for granted; the press tells me the issue is not ‘sexy,’” Ramon Alikpala of the National Water Resources Board (NWRB) said on Wednesday at the Philippine launch of the report. Titled “Asia’s Next Challenge: Securing the Region’s Water Future,” the report emphasized the importance of water security on the “political and developmental agenda of national governments in Asia.”
First released in the United States where the Rockefeller family-funded Asia Sociey is headquartered, the report identified water as the next nexus of conflict.
The report takes off from the Asian Development Bank’s 2007 study that pored over the myth that water shortage is behind the problem; poor water governance is.
The Asia Society said it extends that view by presenting the “security dimensions associated with decreased access to a safe, stable water supply in Asia.”
Asia Society Philippines Foundation Inc. executive director Theo Arnold said during the forum that they use security in its widest meaning.
“Security encompasses individual physical safety, livelihoods, health and human welfare, as well as a realization of the cooperative potential between nation-states and subnational jurisdictions,” Arnold quoted from the report’s executive summary.
Asian Society’s report, however, is issued while the waters are still calm, so to speak, when it cited that water was “more a source of cooperation rather than a source of conflict.”
But that was between the years 1948 and 1999, when water sources remained abundant.
According to the report, countries with lowest water available, for example India, are the most populous, most geopolitically important, but laden with conflicts.
The conflicts are not shooting wars—not yet—but the report said there are tensions between downstream and upstream states. The former relies on the latter’s river system, for example, for water supply.
The tensions may boil, the report said, in transboundary water concerns, or when a country relies on water imported from another. The Philippines, thankfully, has zero water-dependency rate and relies on its total internal renewable water resources, currently 479 cubic kilometers.
Arnold pointed out Bangladesh has the highest dependency rate of 91 percent.
“This relationship is bound to have serious consequences,” Arnold said.
What the Philippines should worry about, Alikpala said, is the lack of supply of freshwater mainly due to pollution, indiscriminate extraction and over-population.
He cited the case of Metro Manila, which gets 70 percent of its water from Bulacan, making such arrangement a political issue for the province.
“During the case of El Niño phenomenon, for example, we have to cut back supply from Angat Dam to irrigate the rice fields of Bulacan and Pampanga,” Alikpala said, citing such as an example of transboundary issues related to water.
He also noted data showing water in Makati City had shown signs of high salinity because “lots of deep wells were dug there without permits.”
Meanwhile, Alikpala noted that at an annual population rate of 2 percent to 2.3 percent, the country would be facing a water shortage by 2025.
As the rain poured for the third day outside the Asian Institute of Management where the forum was held, Alikpala said he is mulling over putting a price on water to emphasize the seriousness of water security.
“I think we should put a price to water, not only in terms of marketing and distribution, but really a price so that people can put a value on it.”
He added that if that happens, “we can look at it as an economic good.”
Alikpala said this is “probably the direction we’re going to take into the future.”