THE POLITICS OF WATER
NO HOLDS BARRED (014) May 15, 2009
By Ike Señeres
THE POLITICS OF WATER
Believe it or not, we as an entire country might end up importing our water supplies not unless we will put our act together in conserving and protecting our overall environment as a whole. More often than not, we often talk about water conservation as if that is the only way to ensure our water supplies. The fact is, it is the entire environment as a whole that functions as a complete ecosystem, a system that includes not just the visually seen water sources, but also the land and the air around us.
Simply put, we need to integrate not just our water policies and practices, but also our policies that affect our land and our atmosphere. As if that is not difficult enough, we also have to integrate and coordinate our collective water, land and air policies as a whole, and to state the obvious, we must also integrate and coordinate the functions and services of all agencies and companies that are involved one way or the other in this triumvirate of natural resources.
During my visit to Israel many years ago, I found out that they only have ONE water agency that is responsible for anything and everything that has to do with WATER. That is in complete contrast to our present system of governance here where we have several, if not too many agencies that are responsible for managing our water needs for many purposes. To cite just a few examples, we have the National Irrigation Authority (NIA) for farm water, and the Local Water Utilities Authority (LWUA) for household water.
I also found out that in Israel, they are able to collect, recycle and distribute water for use in farms and households. Not only that, they are able to classify water for use in farms in a programmable and addressable way, meaning that they could distribute water as needed by ground crops and surface crops, complete with “pre-designed” fertilizers and insecticides.
When I interviewed many visiting scientists many years ago when I was still the head of science and technology at the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA), they all told me the same thing: that we could not clean our bays not unless we clean our rivers, we could not clean our rivers not unless we clean our lands, and we could not clean our lands not unless we clean our mountains. Who is in charge of seeing to it that this integration and coordination is done properly?
As I understand it, the Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA) is supposed to be a planning and coordinating agency. It is their function to integrate the planning for the entire metropolitan area, and to coordinate the implementation and execution of these plans by the member cities and municipalities. What these means is that the MMDA is not supposed to be an operating agency, ergo it should not compete with and duplicate the functions of the other agencies that are supposed to do the actual operations.
It appears that the Pasig River Rehabilitation Commission was created with a good purpose in mind. But whatever good purpose there was in the beginning was apparently lost when it was placed under the supervision of the MMDA. By design, the Commission was supposed to be an operating agency as I understand it, but why was it placed under an agency that was supposed to be non-operating?
It also appears that the Laguna Lake Development Authority (LLDA) was created with a good purpose in mind. As it was created however, did it occur to the planners at that time that the lake could not be cleaned without cleaning the rivers? That the rivers could not be cleaned without cleaning the lands around it, and the mountains above it too? Did it occur to them that the Pasig River is connected to Laguna Bay and the Pasig River eventually leads to Manila Bay?
Several environmentalist groups are now fighting a plan to dredge the Pasig River with the intention of dumping the sludge into the Manila Bay. Is this not a way of getting rid of garbage from one end of the ecosystem only to dump it into another end of the system? And why are we talking only about cleaning the Pasig River with apparently no plan to synchronize its clean up with the clean up of Laguna Bay and Manila Bay?
And why is so much attention given only to the clean up of the Pasig River? Have we forgotten that there are so many other rivers in our country that are either dead or dying? Is it because the Pasig River is more popular?
Email unidaphilippines-subscribe@yahoogroups.com to join the United National Integrated Development Alliance (UNIDA). Text +639293605140
By Ike Señeres
THE POLITICS OF WATER
Believe it or not, we as an entire country might end up importing our water supplies not unless we will put our act together in conserving and protecting our overall environment as a whole. More often than not, we often talk about water conservation as if that is the only way to ensure our water supplies. The fact is, it is the entire environment as a whole that functions as a complete ecosystem, a system that includes not just the visually seen water sources, but also the land and the air around us.
Simply put, we need to integrate not just our water policies and practices, but also our policies that affect our land and our atmosphere. As if that is not difficult enough, we also have to integrate and coordinate our collective water, land and air policies as a whole, and to state the obvious, we must also integrate and coordinate the functions and services of all agencies and companies that are involved one way or the other in this triumvirate of natural resources.
During my visit to Israel many years ago, I found out that they only have ONE water agency that is responsible for anything and everything that has to do with WATER. That is in complete contrast to our present system of governance here where we have several, if not too many agencies that are responsible for managing our water needs for many purposes. To cite just a few examples, we have the National Irrigation Authority (NIA) for farm water, and the Local Water Utilities Authority (LWUA) for household water.
I also found out that in Israel, they are able to collect, recycle and distribute water for use in farms and households. Not only that, they are able to classify water for use in farms in a programmable and addressable way, meaning that they could distribute water as needed by ground crops and surface crops, complete with “pre-designed” fertilizers and insecticides.
When I interviewed many visiting scientists many years ago when I was still the head of science and technology at the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA), they all told me the same thing: that we could not clean our bays not unless we clean our rivers, we could not clean our rivers not unless we clean our lands, and we could not clean our lands not unless we clean our mountains. Who is in charge of seeing to it that this integration and coordination is done properly?
As I understand it, the Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA) is supposed to be a planning and coordinating agency. It is their function to integrate the planning for the entire metropolitan area, and to coordinate the implementation and execution of these plans by the member cities and municipalities. What these means is that the MMDA is not supposed to be an operating agency, ergo it should not compete with and duplicate the functions of the other agencies that are supposed to do the actual operations.
It appears that the Pasig River Rehabilitation Commission was created with a good purpose in mind. But whatever good purpose there was in the beginning was apparently lost when it was placed under the supervision of the MMDA. By design, the Commission was supposed to be an operating agency as I understand it, but why was it placed under an agency that was supposed to be non-operating?
It also appears that the Laguna Lake Development Authority (LLDA) was created with a good purpose in mind. As it was created however, did it occur to the planners at that time that the lake could not be cleaned without cleaning the rivers? That the rivers could not be cleaned without cleaning the lands around it, and the mountains above it too? Did it occur to them that the Pasig River is connected to Laguna Bay and the Pasig River eventually leads to Manila Bay?
Several environmentalist groups are now fighting a plan to dredge the Pasig River with the intention of dumping the sludge into the Manila Bay. Is this not a way of getting rid of garbage from one end of the ecosystem only to dump it into another end of the system? And why are we talking only about cleaning the Pasig River with apparently no plan to synchronize its clean up with the clean up of Laguna Bay and Manila Bay?
And why is so much attention given only to the clean up of the Pasig River? Have we forgotten that there are so many other rivers in our country that are either dead or dying? Is it because the Pasig River is more popular?
Email unidaphilippines-subscribe@yahoogroups.com to join the United National Integrated Development Alliance (UNIDA). Text +639293605140
posted by Ike Señeres at 12:22 PM
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