Unknown to most Filipinos, today (March 22) is the international observance of the World Water Day. This initiative grew out of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) better known as the Earth Summit held in Rio Janeiro, Brazil.

For this year, the theme is “Clean Water for a Healthy World”, with a campaign, said the UN, “to raise the profile of water quality at the political level so that water quality considerations are made alongside those of water quantity”.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), water, together with sanitation and hygiene, have important impacts on both health and disease. In a 2008 report, the WHO noted grim facts on the health situation in relation to access to water, to wit:

• 3.575 million people die each year from water-related disease
• 43 percent of water-related deaths are due to diarrhea
• 84 percent of water-related deaths are in children ages 0 – 14
• 98 percent of water-related deaths occur in the developing world

Meanwhile, a more recent (2010) report by the WHO and the United Nations  Children’s Fund (Unicef) noted disparities between countries, regions, and urban and rural areas in terms of access to sanitation:

• 2.6 billion people or 39 per cent of the world’s population live without access to improved sanitation. The vast majority live in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.
• In the developed regions almost the entire population (99 per cent) used improved facilities as compared to 52 per cent in developing regions.
• At current rates of progress the world will miss the MDG sanitation target by almost 1 billion people, which claims to: “halve, by 2015 the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation,” by 13 per cent. And the MDGs are not the end of the sanitation challenge. Even if the target is met some 1.7 billion people will still not have access to improved sanitation facilities.
• Rural/urban disparities are particularly apparent in sub-Saharan Africa, and the Caribbean, Southern Asia and Oceania where improved sanitation coverage is highest among the urban population despite the vast majority living in rural areas.
• 751 million people share their sanitation facilities with other households or only use public facilities.

Such appalling global reality is reflected in the Philippines where the poor have been increasingly deprived of access to water for basic domestic use due to neoliberal policies such as privatization of water services and resources. The situation continues to deteriorate today due to the El Niño that has further limited water supply available for the people, especially the poor.

According to the 2007 Annual Poverty Indicator Survey (APIS) of the National Statistics Office (NSO):

• 17.1 percent of all families in the country do not have access to safe drinking water and are forced to get water from unsafe sources such as unprotected well (5.7 percent); developed spring (4.8 percent); undeveloped spring (1.9 percent); river, stream, pond, lake or dam (1.1 percent); rainwater (0.4 percent); tanker truck or peddler (2.3 percent); and other sources (0.8 percent).
• Access to water is expectedly lower for poor families as the same NSO survey show that 30 percent of the poorest 30 percent of Filipino families do not have access to safe water supply.

The advocacy group Water for the People Network (WPN) intends to draw public attention to this situation of lack of access to water for basic domestic use and for people’s livelihood amid the El Niño and continuing privatization of the country’s water resources.

Tomorrow, March 23, the WPN will hold a roundtable discussion on Angat Dam’s privatization together with the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) and other stakeholders including farmers from Bulacan, consumers as well as water agencies including the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS).

More on the Angat Dam privatization and the WPN’s roundtable later.