THIS week, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) hosted the Asia Water Forum 2022, a three-day virtual event that examined the challenges, prospects and opportunities for water security and development throughout the region. It is thus a good time to revisit one of the most disappointing failures of the previous Congress, the lack of action on the creation of the critically needed Department of Water Resources (DWR).

The failure was not for lack of an enthusiastic start. In 2019, representatives filed 35 separate bills that would create the DWR, resulting in a consolidated bill — House Bill (HB) 4944, authored by Albay Second District Rep. Jose Ma. Clemente “Joey” Salceda — that was approved by the House committees on government reorganization and public works and highways in November 2019. Similar measures were introduced and sent to committees in the Senate as well, but that was as far as the effort went. The 18th Congress ended with no DWR being born, obliging legislators to go back to square one and reintroduce the measures.

Fortunately, several members of both the House and Senate have expressed the intention to do just that, and we hope that their colleagues will treat the matter with the urgency it deserves this time.

Currently, water resources in the Philippines are governed by a scattershot, disorganized framework; there are at least 39 different agencies involved, with much competition for funding and jurisdiction. This stands in stark and uncomplimentary contrast to the examples of just about every other organized country on earth, where water management is accorded ministerial status; either through a stand-alone, dedicated department, or through concentrating regulatory authority within another relevant department, such as the Department of the Interior in the US, or other countries’ public works departments.

According to the terms of the aborted HB 4944, the number of agencies dealing with water policy and management would be reduced to just two, the new DWR, and the National Water Resources Board (NWRB), which is primarily responsible for allocation of water resources and would continue in its current form. At least 10 other agencies would either be transferred to the new department, or have their functions absorbed by it, including the River Basin Control Office; the Manila Bay Coordinating Office of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR); the flood management planning and sediment functions of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH); the water supply sanitation unit of the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG); the water quality management section of the Environmental Management Bureau of the DENR; the Metro Manila Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS); the Local Water Utilities Administration (LWUA); the Laguna Lake Development Authority (LLDA); and the National Irrigation Administration (NIA).

There were a couple of things about the proposed DWR under HB 4944 that were appealing. First and most importantly, the new department would greatly streamline management of the critical water sector. Philippine governing style has always favored inefficiency, creating an endless number of separate agencies to handle similar activities, multiplying budgets and creating unnecessary overlapping jobs. Streamlining this — which, significantly, would be clearly within the Marcos administration’s “rightsizing” objectives, would reduce costs and improve performance. The proposed DWR could also help to improve regulation of privatized water infrastructure, since resources among different areas of responsibility could be shared and indirect impacts quickly identified.

The recent Asia Water Forum, however, revealed one key consideration that should be made part of any bill reintroducing the DWR. There is a close and inseparable relationship between water, energy and food production, such that any development in one should take into account the impact of the other two. Here in the Philippines, for example, energy and agriculture combined account for just over 91 percent of water demand; conversely, water management accounts for between 2 percent and 3 percent of the country’s electricity demand. Thus, one improvement that we would recommend is that the organizational structure of a new proposed DWR should have close cooperation with the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Energy built into it, in whatever manner is deemed most practical.