Instituting good water governance including responsive policy and institutional arrangements,

appropriate planning, and effective implementation are the keys in addressing the artificial water
crisis in the Philippines.
Your honors, Bukidnon State University presents its cost-benefit analysis and submits that it is
high time to create a Department of Waters and Resources as the chief overseer and sole
regulator of water distribution in the country.
First point, with regulatory functions controlled by so many different agencies, enforcement
becomes difficult, especially when mandates and accountabilities overlap.
Second point, water stability is equitable to economic prosperity.
On the first analysis, although the National Water Resources Board (NWRB) is designated
under the Water Code of the Philippines as chief overseer of water resources management in
the country, NWRB actually shares, if not competes for, its ostensibly all-encompassing
mandate with more than 30 other government offices and corporations that all deal with either
water supply, irrigation, hydropower, flood control, water management or other water-related
concerns. For instance, the mandate of watershed conservation is with the Department of
Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), domestic water supply is with the Local Water
Utilities Administration (LWUA), irrigation water supply is with the National Irrigation
Administration (NIA), and flood control management is with the Department of Public Works and
Highways (DPWH). This becomes very problematic because the sheer number of potential
actors and the assumed plurality of mandates (no mandate is deemed a priority over the others)
make for serious political inertia in terms of getting the job done. Whereas, if we pave way to the
creation of a Department, there will be a central regulatory structure which would provide
coherence in its mandates unlike the present menagerie of laws which led to the current weak
and fragmented institutional and regulatory framework in the water resources sector. The
absence of an integrated water resources management that adopts a holistic approach to water
sector demands will be better addressed under our proposal.
On the second analysis, the country’s water problem is actually ironic, because the country has
enough freshwater resources, rainfall, surface water and groundwater to meet the requirements
of the country’s ever-increasing population and rapid urbanization and industrialization. In the
status quo, NWRB is housed at the Department of Environment and Natural Resources
(DENR). Being a central agency of 120 people only has Php 143M pesos as budget with limited
capacities for water resources management. It is even more astonishing that the total budget of
P651,981,000 million for the Philippine Carabao Center is 4 times more than that of the NWRB
budget. The lean institutional set-up constrains the agency to act on its implementing regulatory
laws which remains a challenge. It is apparent that NWRB suffers from underfunding from the
national government, which limits its ability to hire experts, obtain complete data for planning
and management, and to regularly monitor water resources and water resource activities at the
local and national levels. Wherefore, it must be stressed that the Philippine government’s
responsibility to safe, clean, and accessible drinking water, sanitation and irrigation services to
the public are of utmost importance, and it is attainable through well-coordinated, effective,
efficient and sustainable management of its water and sanitation resources.