Drinking human rights

For the past few weeks, I spend a good amount of time observing a portion of the road along Presidents Avenue around BF Homes in Paranaque, near the place where my family buys drinking water.

This situation is not unique to my family. Arguably one of the largest village in the country and perhaps in Asia, it is ironic that a good part of the area does not have water. And just like many, I have grown tired of asking the same question—why is it that I have to drive at least 2 kilometres to buy a few litres of water because the government has left everything under maintenance?

Consequently, it seems as if the government does not look at clean drinking as a necessity. Moreover water, which makes up at least 70 percent of a person’s body has, in the past years, been treated like a luxury.

According to the United Nations, access to water is a basic human right. In fact, the issue of providing clean water makes up part of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations.

But water does not just appear out of thin air. Giving people access to water is a much more complicated because water is not as abundant in all areas. Several areas in the country, in fact, do not have water. In addition, there are also costs involved in transporting water, which include the construction of pipelines, dams and the like.

What’s even more troubling is that Metropolitan Manila relies solely on the Angat Dam for its water supply. An article in ABS-CBN news took time to highlight a message from the Asian Development Bank, which is pushing for more innovation on technology for sustainable development of water sources. In addition, we waste more water through the pipelines than the amount of water we consume because we have a lot of it. In other words, companies don’t find a need to spend on the conservation of something widely available.

In recent years though, water has started to become more valuable. More specifically, companies that provide clean water for drinking dubbed as water stations have started sprouting to take advantage of an economy and the rising number of the middle class. Hence, the business of delivering alkaline, pi and other kinds of water that claim to be healthier than the other has grown.

And while the business has served to employ hundreds if not thousands of Filipinos, it has just in the same way introduced that idea that if we don’t have money, we’d have to settle for less than eight glasses of water a day—a clear deprivation of a basic necessity and a deprivation of a basic human right.

What’s even more startling is that while more expensive bottled, purified and treated waters enter the market, the government is continuing to struggle to provide this basic necessity.

In addition, there’s a growing culture among the youth of the priviledged today that water is abundant and cheap. We seem to have developed the notion that our supply of water will always be there like the ozone layer.

But the time will come when decent water will become more of a luxury good even for the rich and a mile away from the reach of the poor. Companies are starting to notice that and year by year, water is becoming more expensive.

This could be related to the use of fossil fuels, there was a time (not too long ago) that five hundred pesos could buy a full tank of gas. How much does it cost now? How much do you think water would cost given that we can’t live without it?

The reality is that we don’t have a future without water. We need water to survive, and we should start finding ways to reuse and conserve our supply. This is the reason why many environmental groups are fighting against economic progress.

At some point in the near future, we have to realize that preserving the environment also means preserving our own existence because without an environment with clean water, we would not stand a chance. Why?

Because water is living proof of our fortune