Text and Photos by Henrylito D. Tacio
“Water isn’t just a commodity. It is a source of life.” – Sandra Postel, director of the Massachusetts-based Global Water Policy Project
Within the next 50 years, water will become more precious than oil, according to some studies done by the United Nations.
“The inequality of its distribution in the planet, the desertification, its progressive disappearance as a consequence of global warming and also because of human activity, its wasting or at least its poor rational use and its importance for the growth of every economy will certainly end up by leading to that prevision,” wrote Ana Gloria Lucas in an article entitled, Water: A Matter of Life or Death.
Dr. Sevillo D. David, Jr., executive director of National Water Resources Board, agrees. “Population growth, increased economic activity and improved standard of living are placing tremendous pressure both on the reserve supply and service delivery systems,” he said during the recent trade fair and business leaders’ conference of BIMP-EAGA Summit held in Davao City.
In his presentation, Dr. David said the Philippines has 12 water resources region, 421 principal river basins, 18 major river basins, and 72 lakes. The country’s annual average rainfall is 2,400 millimeters.
The dependable surface water supply of the country is estimated at 125,790 million cubic meters per year. The groundwater potential is around 20,200 million cubic meters per year.
But due to surging population, the current water supply may not be enough. Currently, 100 million Filipinos live in the country’s 300,000 square kilometers. Experts claim that with an annual population rate of 2% to 2.3%, the Philippines would be facing a water shortage by 2025. That’s only 10 years from now.
In Davao City, however, water crisis may even come earlier. As of 2011, the city is home to 1,530,365 people, making it the country’s largest city outside Metro Manila. The city serves as the regional center for the Davao Region.
According to demographers, the spike in the city’s population was mainly due to the influx of people from other parts of the country. As the National Statistics Office explains, “The increase in population was the result of migration, among others, of people from other regions because Davao City offers many opportunities as a hub of government, business, and industries.”
As the economy booms and population swell, water becomes one of the city’s problems. “Right now, over 99 percent of the water consumed by the city comes from groundwater extracted from the Talomo-Lipadas Watershed,” wrote journalist Jeffrey Tupas in an article some years back. “With a daily extraction of 212,000 cubic meters from 50 production wells, sustainability is in danger.”
This daily extraction of groundwater has a corresponding consequence. Dr. Kelvin S. Rodolfo, Professor Emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chicago, interviewed by GMA News Online, singled out Davao City, five other cities, and Metro Manila as those that will experience land subsidence – or the sinking of land.
“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.
Water covers over 70 percent of the earth’s surface and is a major force in controlling the climate by storing vast quantities of heat. About 97.5 percent of all water is found in the ocean and only the remaining 2.5 percent is considered fresh water. Unfortunately, 99.7 percent of that fresh water is unavailable, trapped in glaciers, ice sheets, and mountainous areas.
Water is drawn in two fundamental ways: from wells, tapping underground sources of water called aquifers; or from surface flows – that is, from lakes, rivers, and man-made reservoirs. Water is drawn in two fundamental ways: from wells, tapping underground sources of water called aquifers; or from surface flows – that is, from lakes, rivers, and man-made reservoirs.
Water was acknowledged as a fundamental human right in November 2002 by the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. In its General Comment N. 15 about the Right to Water, the commission stresses that “water is inseparably linked to the right to good health, housing, food, as well as to the right to life and human dignity.”
The World Health Organization reports that about 1.1 billion people do not have access to clean water. Fully 2.4 to 3 billion people lack access to sanitation. Every day, around 3,000 children die of diarrhea caused by unsanitary conditions, the UN Children’s Fund said.
Experts have outlined a basic daily requirement (BWR) — 50 liters per capita per day for the purpose of drinking, sanitation, bathing, cooking, and kitchen needs — and urged its recognition as the standard against which to measure the right to safe water.
But water is not for domestic uses only. Even in industry, water is very much needed. For instance, to produce one smartphone requires 910 liters — or 240 gallons — of water.
“Cellphones and smartphones use water throughout their production process, from creating the microchips to mining the metals used in the batteries to polishing the silica glass used in their touch screens,” writes Stephen Leahy, author of Your Water Footprint. “In total, each phone requires 910 liters of water to manufacture.”
By 2030, in a business as usual scenario, it has been predicted that human consumption of water could outstrip supply by as much as 40%. This would place water, energy and food security at risk, increase public health costs, constrain economic development, lead to social and geopolitical tensions and cause lasting environmental damage, according to Karin Lexen of the Stockholm International Water Institute.
“Therefore, the foundation for a resource efficient green economy must be built upon water, energy and food security and these issues must be addressed in an integrated, holistic manner,” Lexen pointed out.
Sandra Postel, director of the Massachusetts-based Global Water Policy Project, believes water problems will trail climate change as a threat to the human future. “Although the two are related, water has no substitutes,” she explains. “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.”
“Of all the social and natural crises we humans face, the water crisis is the one that lies at the heart of our survival and that of our planet Earth,” surmised Koichiro Matsuura, former director-general of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.
0 Comments
Oldest