We heard a lot lately about the increasing costs of fuel that is making it harder for families to cope with the rising costs of day to day living. Now, even the costs of riding the public transportation have gone up. And this is not just a national problem. It is something that is also affecting many nations in the global village. What we are forgetting is that water may even become more of a problem than oil soon. Many researchers have facts to show that the real threat for people in the future will be water. A major indicator is the growing lack of clean, potable water in many parts of the world. The United Nations has statistics to show that more than 48 countries around the world will lack sufficient amount of water by the year 2050. This means that with the growing population, more than two billion people will not have access to enough freshwater to survive. And the Asia-Pacific region, where almost a billion of the world’s poorest people reside, has among the world’s lowest freshwater supply.
More than food, we need water. Water is the most basic necessity next to the air we breathe. Safe water to drink is essential to our health. When I was a kid, I remember drinking clean and refreshing water straight from the faucet and swimming in the waters of the Pasig River near Sta. Cruz where I was born and raised. In some ways, we have grown backward. Now, bottled drinking water has become a necessity for many Filipinos and we know how polluted the Pasig River still is despite the efforts that have been poured into cleaning it.
Water is not only an essential thing for our sustenance. It was also the rivers that provided early Filipinos with transport. Manila is surrounded by water and to this day, Filipinos living in Manila and neighboring provinces are called Tagalogs, a word that comes from “taga-ilog”, meaning “from the river”. There is also a water fountain, the historic Carriedo fountain that is now in front of the Sta. Cruz Church. It was a marker that symbolized the day when the City of Manila started to have a water system. Few people know that another Basque from Santander, Don Francisco Carriedo y Peredo was the philanthropist and donor of Manila’s fresh water system. With money from a fund that had then become known as the Carriedo Legacy, Governor Domingo Moriones established the first municipal waterworks in 1878, giving Manila its fresh running water for the first time. It is sad to think that this freshwater is now almost gone with most becoming undrinkable water.
The threat to the growing scarcity of freshwater posed by the rising sea levels is very real. We have heard about the changes in climate that is causing nature and environment to go haywire. Too much air pollution is changing the air we breathe. It is said that water is never totally consumed. It always recycles itself, in one form or another. Freshwater has always flowed from the frozen polar ice caps and glaciers melting into the rivers and waterways around the globe. But global climate change is melting the ice causing the sea levels to rise, causing freshwater to mix with salty water. Thus freshwater is becoming too salty for human consumption. And because most of the waters and rivers in the world are now also heavily affected by illegal fishing, pollution and other human activities, and with the sea levels rising, it will not be long when most of the freshwater sources will become totally unfits for drinking.
There is certainly a lack of clean water and this is expected to worsen in the future. Let us take action and manage our existing resources well for the sake of the coming generations.