Water everywhere and nowhere

Water significantly affects our lives. When it is everywhere (e.g. floods) and when it is nowhere (e.g. droughts),  we have serious problems. That is why we need a water master plan so that we can control water, instead of water controlling us.

In the Philippines, 70 percent of our water is used by agriculture. That is why the five coalition Agri Fisheries Alliance (AFA) identified this issue as a priority in executive sessions with President Duterte and Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Piñol. Unfortunately, nothing significant has happened in the last six months. The five AFA coalitions represent farmers and fisherfolk, agribusiness, science and technology, rural women, and multisector leaders.

The AFA has since brought this up with Senate Environment Committee Chair Sen. Loren Legarda, Natural Resources Secretary Gina Lopez and Climate Change Commission (CCC) Secretary Manuel de Guzman.

Last Dec. 17,  AFA met with De Guzman. He approved two AFA proposals: First, CCC will arrange for the formulation of a preliminary skeletal water master plan that will be discussed in a national public-private water summit in March 2017, and, second, the University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB) Foundation will initially act as the coordinator for this master plan formulation, assisted by AFA in its steering committee.

Highlights

Also  participating in this meeting were UPLB Deans Decibel Eslava of Environmental Science and Management and Arnold Alepano of Engineering and Agro Industry Technology; Water Expert Patricia Santos  representing the UPLB Chancellor, and former Planters Development Bank president and Ambassador Jesus Tambunting.

The United Nations had earlier predicted a global shortfall of water by 2030. But a CNN report in the last few days stated that very serious water problems would occur as early as 2020.

In fact, a Pagasa report confims this will be true in the Philippines. By 2020, Batangas will have 20 percent less water during the summer period and 10 percent more water during the rainy period. De Guzman said that the water crisis was already here in the Philippines.  Consequently, the water master plan is urgent.

Eslava identified four major areas that this master plan should address: Water quality, water availability and watershed management.

While this is being done, we should immediately implement low-cost but high impact initiatives. Roger Navarro said that more than 80 percent of our piggery and poultry farms were wasting huge amounts of water. They should construct downspouts that can catch water from the roofs into aquifiers that will, in turn, have low-cost filters to recycle the water.

Alepano said that water management can be significantly improved. More than P25 billion is  spent annually on irrigation. However, though there are 33,000 new irrigated hectares, 70,000 hectares are lost due to management and maintenance problems. Alyansa Agrikultura leader Sonny Siozon cites the  numerous unused Small Water Impounding Dams that are quickly deteriorating.

LGUs play a critical role in addressing polluted water. For example, 80 percent of the massive pollution in the Laguna de Bay comes from households. The LGUs should be equipped with water-treatment facilities and make arrangements for the more than one million households around Laguna de Bay that do not have sanitary toilets and septic tanks.

And of course, the 5.7 million denuded hectares should be addressed immediately with initiatives such as Secretary Lopez’s one-million-hectare bamboo planting program.

Low-lying fruits

Ideas mentioned here are only a few of the many actions that should be taken to address our water crisis.

Even as we do the master plan, we should already implement immediately public-private doable initiatives. The UPLB Foundation, in coordination with the Water Master Plan Steering Committee, should use this as a starting point for the March 2017 Water Summit.

There is no time to lose. As De Guzman stated when the “water everywhere and nowhere” problem was discussed : “This is a moral imperative as it concerns the survival of millions of Filipinos.”