Sunday, March 25, 2007 Mercado: A spoonful o’water By Juan L. Mercado Sidebar
“IMAGINE the entire world as a bucket of water,” urge Asia-Pacific Broad casting Union plugs, aired in the Philippines and 54 other countries. “The fresh water that we can use would equal only a spoonful.”
For 2007 “World Water Day,” those plugs hammer home an ignored fact: You can not drink over 96 percent of this planet’s supply. They’re salt-laced oceans. “Water, water everywhere/ Nor any drop to drink,” mutters Coleridge’s “Ancient Mariner,” through parched lips.
There’s no substitute for water. The body needs a minimum of three liters a day to get by. We drink or we die.
More people drink from the same well, as the Sun.Star four-part series notes. Births and migrants boost population here at twice national rates. Waste and weather changes, spur competing demands for the little balance left.
“The challenge of 21st century water governance may prove to be among the most daunting faced in human history,” says the UN’s new study: “Power, Poverty and the Global Water Crisis.”
And good---or shabby governance---“determines who gets what water, when and how,” the Fourth World Water Forum in Mexico City heard from the triennial report: “Water: A Shared Responsibility.”
Globally, diarrhea kills more people than TB or malaria, World Health Organization data shows. Here, diarrhea “salvages” far more than uniformed assassins, communist pogroms, vigilantes in Davao and Cebu lumped together. About 1,997 per 100,000 population, clustered in poor areas, are affected.
Yet, most election candidates ignore this threat.
In 29 provinces, a quarter of people quaff from easily-contaminated wells, “Philippine Human Development Report” notes. Aside from Cebu, these are: Apayao, Benguet, Nueva Vizcaya, Capiz, Bukidnon, North Cotabato, Ilocos Norte, Kalinga, Guimaras, Zamboanga del Norte, Bohol, Quezon, Masbate, Occidental and Oriental Misamis, Camarines Norte, Agusan del Sur, Leyte, Negros Oriental and Occidental---plus the entire Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.
Has any candidate examined consequences that spill across generations?
“Repeated bouts of diarrhea…are associated with disadvantages that stretch from cradle to grave,” the UN report adds. Victims experience weight loss, stunting, vitamin deficiency and “cognitive infirmities,” i.e. dumbed down.
Cities are becoming “water-critical areas,” government agencies, research institutions and development banks unanimously agree. “(Water) has become a critically constrained resource... particularly in areas around Manila and Cebu, threatening socio-economic development,” a World Bank study observes.
Mayor Tomas Osmeña sneers at this view as exaggerated. But a sneer is not policy. It has not provided a drop of water for his South Reclamation project. Nor will scoffing reduced demand for supplies to double in 24 years.
Cebu, meanwhile, overdraws twice the amount its limited aquifers can recharge. Deep wells are conking out. And salt contaminates irreversibly these small limestone containers. “Paraplegic governance guarantees that today’s scarcities in Cebu will be tomorrow’s shortages.”
Look at other countries’ experience. “Waterlords” emerged in Gujarat, India, where unsustainable water mining occurs, the UN notes. In Pakistan, as water tables sank, the costs of pumping bolted. And so did the cost of digging wells.
Politicians peddle water below-production costs to score “brownie points. “Such policies discourage efficient use and threaten sustainability.”
For the future, governments must instead: (a) regulate groundwater extraction; ( b) make polluters pay; ( c ) cut subsidies and price water realistically.
