“Kung kailan nawawala saka pa hahanapin,” so goes a line of a popular song.
The line doesn’t apply to love only but to water as well. People rise their protest when there is no water coming out from their faucet or during the drought season. They also pay attention to water when there is plenty, especially during the rainy season and when there is flood.
In a study done by the Japan International Cooperation Agency some years back, Davao City was one of the nine major cities in the country that were listed as “water-critical areas.” The other eight were Metro Manila, Metro Cebu, Baguio, Angeles, Bacolod, Iloilo, Cagayan de Oro and Zamboanga.
This coming November, Davao City will commemorate Water Consciousness Month, by virtue of Proclamation No. 12 which was signed by then Mayor Rodrigo R. Duterte on September 27, 2001.
The Davao City Water District (DCWD) has been tapped as the lead agency to remind Dabawenyos of the importance of water and also their roles in helping conserve this most valuable resource.
But why should we need to make awareness about water? The reason is simple: without water, life will cease to exist. To quote the words of famed Leonardo da Vinci: “Water is the driving force in nature.”
“A person can survive only three to five days without water, in some cases people have survived for an average of one week,” says thewaterpage.com. “Once the body is deprived of fluids the cells and organs in the body begin to deteriorate. The presence of water in the body could mean the difference between life and death.”
Water is very important because it has several functions within the human body. For one, “it transports nutrients and other compounds. As a major component of the blood, water helps move glucose, water-soluble vitamins, minerals, other nutrients and some medications throughout your body,” states another website, www.universalclass.com.
If you’re hot, water is the best antidote. The website explains: “When you become too hot, your blood vessels dilate and you start sweating. The sweat evaporating on your skin is cooling. Water also has a high heat capacity. This means that a lot of energy is needed to increase its temperature. Since the body contains more water than anything else, it takes quite a significant amount of heat to raise your body temperature.”
Eating any kind of food is harder when there is no saliva. “Fortunately, our salivary glands produce ample saliva, which is largely water,” the website states. “Tears lubricate and clean the eyes, and synovial fluid lubricates your joints. Cerebrospinal fluid protects your brain and spine from trauma. Similarly, amniotic fluid surrounds and shields the fetus. Fluids throughout your body protect and lubricate your organs and tissues.”
More importantly, water participates in metabolism. “Most chemical reactions in your body use water in at least one of three ways: a solvent, a reactant or a product of the chemical reaction,” the website explains. “Water produced in chemical reactions is called metabolic water, and your body uses it in the same ways it uses the water you drink.”
“Water is the most precious asset on Earth,” points out Dr. Sandra Postel, director of the Massachusetts-based Global Water Policy Project. “It is the basis of life.” She believes water problems will be right there with climate change as a threat to the human future.
“Although the two are related, water has no substitutes,” Postel says. “We can transition away from coal and oil to solar, wind and other renewable energy sources. But there is no transitioning away from water to something else.”
A person needs at least 24 liters of water daily or one liter per hour. Even when he breathes, he still needs water. “Our lungs must be moist to take in oxygen and excrete carbon dioxide,” wrote Leroy Perry in a Reader’s Digest article. “It is possible to lose half a liter of liquid each day just by exhaling.”
Davao City, one of biggest cities in the country, is blessed with abundant fresh drinking water, both ground and surface. According to its website, “Mount Apo serves as the recharge point and the areas at the foot of the mountain contain these large reservoirs, the biggest of which is the Calinan, Toril and Talomo Triangle.”
As everyone now knows, the city’s tap water is considered to be the “best water in the world.” Its water is tested internationally to be the best quality of clean and safe water in the world. Actually, it is said to be “absolutely perfect.”
Unlike in Metro Manila or Metro Cebu, Davao City doesn’t have too many residents yet but in the near future some of the residents may soon experience waking up without water flowing from their faucets.
“Today, we withdraw water far faster than it can be recharged – unsustainably mining what was once a renewable resource,” deplores Janet Abramovitz, a researcher/writer of the Washington-based Worldwatch Institute.
A recent report from the United Nations and the Stockholm Environment Institute said that by the year 2025, two-thirds of the world’s population would be affected by water shortages.
“World demand for water doubles every 21 years, but the volume available is the same as it was in the Roman times,” observes Sir Crispin Tickell, former British ambassador to the United Nations and one of the organizers of the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. “Something has got to give.”
As water becomes more scarce, conflict over water rights are inevitable. “Wars will be fought over water,” Ismael Serageldin, former official of the World Bank, once pointed out.
But wars should not happen. In the Hebrew Bible, no less a figure than Moses, whose very name meant “Drawn out of Water,” once erred fatefully in his effort to obtain water. As related in chapter 20 of the Book of Numbers, the people of Israel strove with Moses after he had led them into the waterless wilderness: “Why have ye brought us into this wilderness to die here?” Seeing their plight, the Lord then instructed Moses: “Speak ye to the rock before their eyes, that it give forth its water.” But instead of speaking to the rock, Moses lifted his staff and smote the rock.
Water did come forth, momentarily, but at a terrible price. For so transgressing, Moses, along with his entire generation, was condemned to die in the desert rather than enter the Promised Land. The passage concludes with the words: “These are the Waters of Strife, where Israel strove with the Lord.”
To end this piece, allow me to quote the words of Rebecca Solnit, author of Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics: “If gold has been prized because it is the most inert element, changeless and incorruptible, water is prized for the opposite reason — its fluidity, mobility, changeability that make it a necessity and a metaphor for life itself. To value gold over water is to value economy over ecology, that which can be locked up over that which connects all things.”
