Water crisis threatens human health

“The world has got a very big water problem,” says Sir Crispin Tickell, former British ambassador to the United Nations and one of the organizers of the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.  “It will be the progenitor of more wars than oil.”
The Rockefeller family-funded Asia Society agrees.  Its new report, Asia’s Next Challenge: Securing the Region’s Water Future, has identified water as the “next nexus of conflict.”  So much so that it urges national governments of Asia to put water security on the “political and developmental agenda.”
An estimated 799 million people in Asia do not have access to safe drinking water, said professor Tommy Koh, chairman of the Asia-Pacific Water Forum Governing Council.  The region’s water woes stem from a combination of inadequate supplies to service an increasing urban population, pollution, poor infrastructure and endemic corruption.
“If the present trends continue, Asian will soon face a water quality management that is unprecedented in human history,” warns Kallidaikurichi Seetharam, director of the Institute of Water Policy in Singapore.
Sandra Postel, director of the Massachusetts-based Global Water Policy Project, believes water problems will be right there with climate change as a threat to human future.  More importantly, higher global temperatures will worsen the current water problems.
“Although the two are related, water has no substitutes.  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,” said the head of the group that seeks to save fresh water.
Only 2.5 percent of the water that covers over 70 percent of the earth’s surface is considered fresh water.  “Water is everywhere,” said an official of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.  “In our bodies, in the air we breathe, in the food we eat and in the countryside around us.  It’s part of our history and our religions.”
“Water is the most precious asset on Earth,” points out Postel.  “It is the basis of life.”  Next to air, water is the element most necessary for survival.  A normal adult is 60- to 70-percent water. A person can live without food for almost two months, but without water only for a few days.
A household of five needs at least 120 liters per day to meet basic needs – for drinking, food preparation, cooking and cleaning up, washing and personal hygiene, laundry, house cleaning, according to the Washington-based Worldwatch Institute, a global environmental group.
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 an article.  “It is possible to lose half a liter of liquid each day just by exhaling.”
The rapid population growth over the last century has been a major factor in increasing water usage.  Experts claim that with an annual population rate of 2 percent to 2.3 percent, the Philippines would be facing a water shortage by 2025.
In 2007, the country was home to 87.9 million Filipinos.  By 2015, the population is seen to reach around 101 million, according to the World Development Indicators 2009, the latest publication released by the World Bank.
The water demands – and shortages — of many cities throughout the country are expanding.  In a study done by the Japan International Cooperation Agency, nine major cities were listed as “water-critical areas.” These were Metro Manila, Metro Cebu, Davao, Baguio, Angeles, Bacolod, Iloilo, Cagayan de Oro and Zamboanga.
“The rapid urbanization of the Philippines, with more than two million being added to the urban population annually, is having a major impact on water resources,” notes  ADB in its recently-released, Asian Water Development Outlook 2007. 
“Untreated wastewater affects health by spreading disease-causing bacteria and viruses, makes water unfit for drinking and recreational use, threatens biodiversity, and deteriorates overall quality of life,” said the Philippines Environment Monitor 2003 published by the Asian Development Bank.
Paradoxically, water shortage spawns a Jekyll-and-Hyde phenomenon: from life giver, water turns into a pernicious killer.  Dr. Klaus Toepfer, during his term as executive director of the Nairobi-based United Nations Environment Program, said: “Unlike the energy crisis, the water crisis is life threatening.”
Contaminated water causes 90 percent of cases of diarrhea among children.  Acute diarrhea is one of the five leading causes of sickness and death among Filipino children  — for every 100,000 live births, 914 die of diarrhea, leading to almost 12,000 infant deaths every year from a preventable and easily curable illness.
Other common water-related and water-borne diseases are malaria, dengue fever, filariasis, typhoid fever, dysentery, cholera, hepatitis A, and schistosomiasis.  “Bad water quality is major cause of diseases in the Philippines,” said one headline.
Studies worldwide have shown that programs to encourage the habit of washing of hands with soap can reduce diarrhea by between 30 and 50 percent.  In the Philippines, surveys showed that nearly all people regularly wash their hands before eating.  But only 26 percent of households regularly wash their hands before handling and preparing food, and less than 50 percent regularly wash their hands after going to the toilet.
“As many as 76 million people – mainly children – will die from preventable, water-related diseases by 2020 even if current United Nations goals are reached,” said Dr. Peter H. Gleick, director of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment and Security.
The UN has set a goal of 2015 for cutting in half the number of people who can’t reach or afford safe drinking water.  “It is a grave moral shortcoming that 1.2 billion people cannot drink water without courting disease or death,” asserts The Last Oasis.
In 24 provinces, one of every five residents quaffs water from dubious sources, the Philippine Human Development Report says.  The current “crisis in water and sanitation is – above all – a crisis of the poor,” says the United Nations Development Program study: Beyond Scarcity: Power, Poverty and the Water Crisis.
In industrialized countries like Sweden or Japan, water-borne disease is a subject for history books. But in the Philippines, it involves hospital wards and morgues.  “All of these diseases are associated with our failure to provide clean water,” deplored Dr. Peter Gleick, director of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment and Security. 
Problems with water quality and supply have made bottled water very popular in the Philippines.  People traveling in other parts of the country almost always bring or buy bottled water wherever they go. 
“By means of water,” says the Koran, “we give life to everything.” But the life-giving fresh water is soon to vanish.  “Water, water everywhere,” wrote Samuel Taylor Coleridge in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, “but not a drop to drink.”