Many may not realize it but the water crisis is increasingly getting too big with the entire governance over the country’s water resources appearing to be in total shambles, making it difficult to address the impending water crisis.
Over 30 agencies involved in H20? Do you know that there are over 30 national and local agencies involved in overlapping water and sanitation concerns? This is one of the many issues raised during the recent Water Pre-Summit held on July 12, which is the seventh in a series of public consultations held in Davao, Bohol, Pampanga and elsewhere over the past months to gather ideas for a “Comprehensive National Plan for Water Security”. Each summit tackled one of specific sectors affected, namely, environment, economy, households, urban communities, resilience, agriculture and governance.
The last presummit held in Metro Manila focused on governance, where every one agreed that, indeed, “more than 30 government agencies are involved in water-related concerns, and that all are disunited and uncoordinated,” said Ernesto M. Ordoñez, one of the leaders of the Agriculture Fisheries Alliance, which was among those tasked to organize the series of water presummits.
In a classic case of “too many cooks spoil the broth”, studies done by the Asia Development Bank (ADB) in 2013 and 2016 rank the Philippines at the bottom quarter of 48 economies in the Asia Pacific. The ADB declared that water problems in the Philippines are mainly caused by “inappropriate management practices, rather than physical scarcity of water”.
Lacks teeth, needs “molar support”? There is a general consensus to rationalize the current organizational clutter into one apex body, although a similar centralized apex body already existed during the Marcos regime, but for some reason or the other this did not work effectively, thus its functions were chopped down subsequently as the trend then after Edsa 1986 was toward more deregulation and
decentralization.
Today, the National Water Resources Board is also structured like an apex body, representing many key agencies and mandated to coordinate with every related agency involved in water. The problem with a policy coordinating body is that it lacks the teeth to implement what it plans because when member-agencies are back, they will only prioritize their respective mandates and neglect water again.
Some want another super body, or even a Department of Water, on the argument that if the water problem is not addressed, the threat of war over water becomes more imminent, said James Fergusson in his 2015 Newsweek article. And because the direction is toward more teeth into the new body, it therefore needs more molar support.
Paradox of shortage amid plenty. Lamentably while the entire water governance is trapped in indecision, political turf bickering and the confusing pendulum policy swings, the water-shortage problem is creeping unnoticed.
Metro Manila’s demand for water is increasing steadily and is now 96-percent dependent on Angat Dam. Sadly, plans over two decades ago to build either the Laiban Dam or Wawa Dam to supplement Angat were aborted.
Despite being a tropical archipelago visited by 21 typhoons and a high rainfall, we experience pockets of droughts resulting into the Kidapawan riots and deaths mainly because we only harvest 4 percent of rains compared to India’s 60 percent, Ordoñez says.
Moreover, due to the lack of water, about 55 Filipinos die daily because of dirty water. The National Sewerage and Septage Management Program itself reports that 55 Filipinos die daily because over 90 percent of sewage is not collected or treated. And only 10 percent of the population has access to piped- sewage systems.
When irrigation projects don’t hold water? It is also said there is massive corruption at the National Irrigation Administration, which allegedly tends to rehabilitate existing irrigation canals more than build new canals. Perhaps, it is easier to figuratively drown anomalies, unlike when you build new ones that show physical proofs. This needs to be probed, and if true, we can say these irrigation projects do not figuratively hold water.
Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel F. Piñol is right when he declared at a news conference favoring Small Water Impounding Projects and catch basins over big dams that take years to build.
In fact, former President Corazon C. Aquino signed in 1989 Republic Act 6716 mandating Department of Public Works and Highways to build 100,000 catch basins and small dams, but since this was not the agency’s priority, much less than 1 percent was achieved, with the responsibility passed on years later to local governments, which also gave it low priority.
A users’ tax on water? On my suggestion to slap a users’ tax on Maynilad, Manila Water and water districts, National Economic and Development Authority Director General Ernesto M. Pernia said it is worth studying. This can go to a special fund for massive water and sanitation projects. A mechanism transparent to the public and jointly managed by the government and the private sector can be done.
These minidams or catch basins can reverse soil erosion on denuded mountain slopes, thus allowing for contour farming, agro-forest growth, upland crops, vegetable farming and livestock raising that could bail out mountain farmers from total poverty. As these store rainwater, raising fish becomes possible, and all it takes is technology transfer from experts. All this can wipe out hunger and poverty in the countryside, and reverse the massive urban-to-rural migration owing to the lack of opportunities in agriculture.
Building maybe a few hundreds of thousands of minidams or catch basins will not only generate massive jobs in the countryside, but it will also be the best climate-change adaptation strategy to prevent soil erosion and water run-offs, thus minimizing flashfloods while keeping water in the watersheds and contributing to underground aquifers.
E-mail: mikealunan@yahoo.com.