Sunday, August 17, 2008 Mercado: Grade B showbiz By Juan L. Mercado Sidebar
HEFTING both shotgun and 9 mm pistol, Mayor Tomas Osmeña mimicked legendary lawman Wyatt Earp in “Gunfight at O.K. Corral.” His unwitting supporting actors were picket line strikers at Gaisano South. This is Grade B showbiz. It can distract from things that matter.
Take water. A man will fight over three things, Sen. Barry Goldwater asserts. “Water, women and gold---in that order.”
Thus, 2,500 scientists, from over 180 countries, are now meeting in Sweden for Fifth World Water Week. “Civilization is a permanent dialogue between human beings and water,” Paolo Lugari of Colombia asserts.
This year’s theme boils down to one word: sanitation–-and its link to water.“ About 1.8 million children die each year from diarrhea and other water-borne diseases. These deaths are preventable, UN’s “Human Development Report” notes. “No act of terrorism generates economic devastation on the scale of the crisis in water and sanitation.”
But “leaders” yawn over the toll. Why? Because most victims are the poorest. Unpainted coffins of their children don’t make prime time news. “This is a constituency that lacks a voice,” UN adds.
The sanitation crisis is acute in Asia. “In Manila and Jakarta, limited coverage of sewerage (8 to 10 percent) gave rise to a highly developed infrastructure of pit latrines." Cebu has no sewerage system. (This system) removes waste from households. But much ends in rivers.” Indeed, “throughout literature, the man who poisons the well is the worst of villains.”
Stigma is a major obstacle. Officials ignore open defecation (“wrap and throw”). This is lethal in a world where four out of every six, who draw water from the well, is Asian.
There were 88.5 million Filipinos in 2007 – up from 19.2 million in 1948. Migration and high birth rates double Cebu’s population growth over national levels.
Cities are “imploding.” Urban population could grow by 70 percent in just 25 years, Asian Development Bank forecasts. That’d require policy to ensure massive shift in resources, including water and food.
For the first time ever, the Stockholm meet will set aside Tuesday (Aug. 19) as “Asia Day.” Delegates will assess supply and its neglected flip side: conservation.
Cebu ’s supply is dwindling. Its aquifers are overdrawn. And salt contamination has irreversibly damaged many. Osmeña blocked projects to draw surface water from towns. Oil now costs $117 a barrel. This makes the modern but energy-intensive desalination prohibitive.
Correction: “Irrigation of the land with seawater desalinated by fusion power is ancient,” Michael McClary writes. “It is called rain.”
Rain-harvesting devices cover almost 90 percent of Singapore although it operates a $400 million desalination plant. In Cebu, as in Spain, “rain stays mainly on the plain”-–but as flash floods. The city has no water policy, let alone rain-harvesting measures.
A Millennium Development Goal seeks “to halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and improved sanitation.”
Today, 80 percent of Filipinos drink from improved water sources—up from 73 percent in 1990. This overall figure masks disparities. Four out of ten in Cebu use open easily-tainted wells. That’s better than Masbate’s seven. But it is only one in Bulacan.
Fast growing slum populations, in cities, further widen the water--sanitation gap with rural areas, cautions the Asia-Pacific MDG study series. “In the Philippines and Vietnam, still close to half their population in cities live in slums.”
“Anyone who can solve the problem of water will be worthy of two Nobel prizes,” John F. Kennedy wrote. “One for peace and the other for science.”
“What water problem?” snaps Osmeña. Delusion, however, can spawn Grade B show biz.
