Water will become the dominant national issue this century and the availability of its supply could threaten the country’s social stability, some experts believe.
The ever-increasing population, rapid urbanization and destruction of natural resources are all placing enormous pressure on the availability of clean water.
How the soaring demands of the three leading sectors – agriculture, industrial and domestic – could be met without compromising the needs of the future generations is something policy makers and politicians should think about.
In Davao City, the Davao City Water District (DCWD) is tapping the Tamugan River as a new surface source of water.
The new source can supply as much as 400 million liters of water per day, according to DCWD. In addition, the groundwater sources could supply as much as 135 million liters of water per day. These “are more than enough to cover the projected water demand of 331.5 million liters per day for the water utility’s service coverage area by 2012,” the water district said in a statement.
But for how long this solution can be stretched, no one knows. As the economy booms, the influx of people from rural areas and other cities also increases. Already, Davao City is home to about two million people.
Booming economy and rising population mean more water utilization. “The rapid urbanization of the Philippines is having a major impact on water resources,” observed the Manila-based Asian Development Bank in its report.
In the Philippines, agriculture has the highest demand of all water use with 85% while the other sectors – industry and domestic – have a combined demand of only 15%.
“Water use has been growing at more than twice the rate of population increase in the last century and an increasing number of countries are reaching the limit at which reliable water services can be delivered,” Thierry Facon, a former official of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), told this columnist some years back.
I don’t want to be called a prophet of doom but the experts have spoken. Don Hinrichsen, with whom I have co-authored an extensive report on the problem for the Woodrow Wilson Institute Center for Scholars, considered the water crisis as “one of the most pressing environment and development problems facing humanity.”
“It may very well end up being one of the main issues confronting humanity as we proceed further into the 21st century,” Hinrichsen pointed out bluntly. “We are already robbing Peter to pay Paul, as it were – taking water away from one set of users and giving it to another set.”
And we are only talking about people. “The rest of the earth’s species are left out of the equation altogether,” the award-winning American journalist deplored. He was referring to the biological diversity that also inhabits this planet.
“Can we really maintain this level of development and consumption without severe and irreversible consequences for the rest of the planet’s complement of plants and animals?” Hinrichsen asked. “And water will be perhaps the defining issue in this regard.”
It’s not only a problem of quantity but also of quality. “Water resources are being squeezed from both ends – supply and demand,” Hinrichsen said, “while available supplies are being degraded beyond the point where they can be used for even agricultural use!”
Now, perhaps you get the drift of how big the problem really is.
In the Philippines, several factors contribute to water shortage, including variability in climate, demographic patterns and unsustainable water-use patterns. In some urban areas where water is available, 50% never reaches the designated consumers due to leakage, theft and poor management.
These identified problems are compounded by the degradation of the water resource base. For instance, some of the country’s largest cities are located in watersheds (also called catchment areas or drainage basins) where all available water is being used.
“Land use and vegetative cover in the watershed are very important because they affect water flow and water quality,” explained Patrick Durst, former forestry officer of the FAO regional office in Bangkok, Thailand.
A recent report released by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources said that 90% of the 99 watershed areas in the country are “hydrologically critical” due to their degraded physical condition as a result of loss of forest cover.
Climate change – the increase in global temperatures due to greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide, that trap heat from the sun – will even make the problem more serious.
“Climate change is likely to introduce high levels of risks and uncertainties that the water profession simply may not be able to handle with any degree of confidence, at least over the near term,” an official from ADB told this columnist. “This aspect needs urgent attention and accelerated research from water scientists and climatologists.”
Although water and climate change are related, the impact of severity of water problems comes close to second to climate change, according to Sandra Postel, the American director of Global Water Policy Project in Massachusetts.
“Water has no substitutes,” she wrote in her email to this columnist. “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.”
Just remember this: less than one percent of the world’s freshwater (0.007% to be exact) is readily accessible for direct human use. A person needs 4-5 gallons of water per day to survive. While a person can live weeks without food, he can only live days without water.
