Boracay, Du30 and water

Boracay has been hugging the headlines recently. This is largely because President Duterte is demonstrating his strong political will in addressing boldly and effectively the water problem there. It is this same deep commitment and steely determination that we expect President Duterte to soon show as he tackles the bigger issue of poor water governance in the country. It is reported that 73 people die every day from water-related causes.

Since Boracay is a worldwide top tourist destination, it is getting wide publicity. But Boracay is just a symptom of the much larger water problem that affects a great majority of our people, especially the poor.

Global Perspective

From the United Nations University, we cite here alarming items from their 2017 publication: “Global Water Crisis: The Facts.”

There will be a 40-percent gap between water demand and water availability by 2030. This is distressing, especially because we collect only 4 percent of our rainwater. Some parts of India collect up to 60 percent.

There are 1.8 billion people who now use drinking water contaminated by feces. Though we are already very deficient in addressing sanitation, we are far worse in addressing our much larger septage problem.

30 percent of global water extraction is lost through leakage. In Metro Manila, this improved greatly through the Maynilad and Manila Water privatization. But in places like Cagayan de Oro, a 2016 report showed that water lost through leaks, wastage, pilferage through illegal connections and other means reached 53 percent. Fortunately, a USAID program is addressing this problem, but so many other cities are without adequate help.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has said that by 2025, two-thirds of the world’s population will be living in areas suffering from a severe lack of water caused by a number of factors. In the “Asian Water Development Outlook 2016: Strengthening Water Security in Asia and the Pacific,” the Philippines is identified in the bottom third of a 48-nation water study. We have been found very deficient in all five sectors that the ADB studied: Environment, agriculture, economics, domestic/household, urban, and resilience. The poor rating of the Philippines hardly improved from an earlier 2013 ADB study. The ADB report stated that the main problem was not the availability of water, but poor governance.

Philippine situation

Realizing this problem, the five-coalition Agri-Fisheries Alliance (AFA) met with then presidential candidate Duterte to ask for his help on the water issue. This was held on April 16, 2016, from 4 a.m. to 5:30 a.m., between six AFA leaders, on one hand, and Duterte and now Presidential Management Staff Secretary Bong Go, on the other. In that meeting, Duterte committed to address the water problem.

Climate Change Commission Secretary Emmanuel de Guzman contends that the water crisis is already here, given all the disasters we are already experiencing. In fact, Duterte has already taken action. In a Jan. 20, 2017, meeting, a Steering Committee for the National Water Roadmap and Summit was created. This was convened by six departments (Neda, DENR, DA, DPWH, DILG and the Office of the Cabinet Secretary), the Senate and House of Representatives, and two major private sector organizations. The seven Water Pre-Summits were organized in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao based on the five ADB-identified sectors, with the addition of agriculture and governance.

Last March 26, an action planning session was held with Economic Planning Secretary Ernesto Pernia, the chair of the Steering Committee. Each sector’s management team (composed of a leader each from the government, academe and the private sector) presented their priority actions to be taken in the next nine months.

It was pointed out that the Boracay high profile exposure could well provide the catalyst to more attention given by the national government to the larger more critical water issue (these actions will be the subject of next week’s commentary). It is noteworthy that from the seven private sector leaders (one per sector) are two Nobel Prize winners and two former department secretaries.

The water issue should receive even more attention than Boracay. Though significant accomplishments on the water issue have already been achieved under the Duterte administration, it is only when President Duterte publicly focuses on water as a key priority that we will overcome the great water challenge that we now face.