Griselda Santos l September 16, 2022 l The Manila Times
ON Sept. 20, 2022, the Financial Executives Institute of the Philippines (Finex), Management Association of the Philippines (MAP), ACCRA Law and The Manila Times, led by Water.org (https://water.org/about-us/founders-board-team/), will host the “Sustainable Path to Water Security for the Philippines” forum. The hybrid event, with onsite participation at the Fairmont Hotel, Makati City, will be the first time for these five organizations to come together in bringing the public and private sectors to a dialogue on water and sanitation.
The forum will cover issues and concrete actions taken by both sectors to address financing for sustainable access to safe water and sanitation. The end goal is to equip everyone with the knowledge and increased appreciation of these issues and deepen collaboration and partnerships between the public and private sectors toward achieving Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6 — Water and Sanitation.
In my previous role at the International Finance Corp., I organized and mobilized several forums focused on financial inclusion and MSME finance, mostly under the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Business Advisory Council. Looking back and considering the effort to drum up this upcoming forum, mobilizing the right people was a greater challenge, to the point of doubting if it mattered really for others. I came to realize that even for me, it was a journey and a process to really have the passion to fully appreciate the worth of water.
I joined Water.org last year. It was not until the third opportunity to work for Water.org that I finally got it, in terms of how it aligned with financial inclusion and fully appreciated water and sanitation as an important sustainable development goal.
In 2019 when I retired from the World Bank Group, I had the opportunity to work with conditional cash transfer beneficiaries of the Philippines to enhance the financial literacy training program for the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program. This is the Philippines’ conditional cash transfer program to help the lowest income families receive assistance from the government.
In an ice-breaking session, each beneficiary was asked to write down their wish lists. It was normal to see aspirations like “I want to have my own business” and “I want to see my kids through college” but what moved me was the wish to have their own electricity and water. What did that mean?
It was hard to relate to because I would wake up each day with water flowing from the faucet. I came to realize that my reality was not the reality for many Filipinos in the lowest income households, mostly women and children who are tasked to fetch water each day. According to the Unicef, women and girls spend 200 million hours each day collecting water.
Let us look deeper into the indicators that for me summarize the need to take the worth of water seriously. According to the World Economic Forum, one-third of people worldwide still lack access to safe drinking water and 3 billion people do not have hand-washing facilities. By 2030, the world may face a 40 percent global gap between water supply and demand, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. At the same time, the global costs of achieving SDG 6 exceed $1 trillion per year or 1.21 percent of global GDP (gross domestic product).
In the context of the Philippines, it is promising to see that President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. highlighted the importance of water in his first State of the Nation Address, with the Water Resources and Management Authority Act one of his administration’s legislative priorities. The proposed law can help improve the governance and oversight of water as a resource.
The issue of water and sanitation, however, is beyond enabling policy or governance structure as financing is key. It will be extremely challenging for the government alone, with its competing priorities to address the water and sanitation sector financing gap. This is the very reason The Manila Times, Finex, MAP, ACCRA Law and Water.org are coming together. The September 20 forum will open the dialogue for the public and private sectors to work together on access to finance for water and sanitation.
Among the key government agencies who will have officials speak at the forum are the Department of Finance, National Economic and Development Authority, Department of Energy and Natural Resources, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, Land Bank of the Philippines, Development Bank of the Philippines and Philippine Guarantee Corp. From the private sector, we will have the Rural Bankers’ Association of the Philippines, Manila Water, Metro Pacific Water, local government units, and others.
So, what is the worth of water? Is it worth spending the time to join this dialogue and understand and act on the issue? Can you imagine a day when you open your faucet and no water comes out? It may be hard to imagine. Let me try again: imagine one day with no internet connectivity at all. Unimaginable, yes. That is the worth of water.
*** Gay Santos is the regional director for Southeast Asia for Water.org, a global NGO co-founded by Matt Damon and Gary White. She retired from the World Bank Group in 2019 and holds an MBA degree from the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, USA. The opinion expressed here does not necessarily reflect the views of these institutions and The Manila Times.