December 15, 2010

MANILA, Philippines – In Tanay, an indigenous Philippines community endowed with a river, tributaries and springs, villagers must travel 45 minutes by jeep to buy drinking water.

"It is unfortunate for a community abounding in water to have no access to clean and safe water," commented Dr Salima Rahman, who coordinates the Rangpur Dinajpur Rural Service (RDRS), a non-governmental organization in Bangladesh. "The community has springs but it does not have pipes to bring spring water to households."

Rahman and other church and civil society representatives visited the Rizal province community located in a river valley southeast of Manila in November as part of a regional consultation on communities' rights to water and sanitation in Asia.

The consultation was organized by the World Council of Churches-supported Ecumenical Water Network (EWN), a faith-based water rights advocacy group, and hosted by the National Council of Churches in the Philippines.

The 40 participants from 12 Asian countries challenged what they described as a distorted reading of the Old Testament's Genesis story in which God told Adam and Eve to "subdue the earth" and "have dominion" over the other species and resources on the planet.

The appropriate translation of the original Hebrew is "‘to oversee and take care' rather than Ôsubdue and have dominion,'" noted Dr Hrangthan Chhungi of the National Council of Churches in India. "So we are overseers and caretakers of God's creation."

Misinterpretation of the biblical creation story has helped legitimize often destructive development projects and the monopoly of vital resources, participants said. Tanay is an apt case study.

Persistent Opposition

Rahman was among three representatives of The Lutheran World Federation (LWF) Department for World Service (DWS) country and associate programs participating in the regional consultation. They learned first-hand why villagers in Tanay oppose a proposed big dam project.

The villagers have been resisting the project since 1979, when it was proposed under the regime of the late strongman Ferdinand Marcos. They thought their problem was over when Marcos was ousted in February 1986.

But the need for cheap sources of electricity coupled with the growing demand for water by Manila's almost 20 million inhabitants has prompted succeeding governments to revive Marcos' project.

The Laiban Dam project, known as the Manila Water Supply Project III, was bid out in 2007 and awarded and approved in 2008. Construction was set to begin in 2009 with completion in 2013.

The 113-metre high dam would submerge over 28,000 hectares covering seven villages, the ancestral territory of more than 10,000 indigenous Dumagat folk and other settlers. The project would divert 2,400 million liters of water daily to Manila. It would dry up the irrigation supply of adjoining lowland farms in the neighboring towns of Infanta and Real in Quezon province.

But the villagers' persistent opposition continues to delay the project.

"We have to defend our community, whose fertile land has sustained us for generations," elder Danilo Torvator underlined. "With our limited education, we cannot find elsewhere any other better work than farming."

Torvator and other villagers grow rice and corn, cassava, yam, sweet potato, and various fruits, including coconuts, mangoes, papaya and banana.

"Our river is also our public market," said Federico Ubana, another elder, referring to the lobsters, eels and various fish species they catch from the river and its tributaries.

The government and a private firm are determined to tap water from Laiban for Manila. But the government has yet to provide safe, clean water for the villagers through simple water-drawing facilities such as pipes.

Empowering Communities

The story repeats itself throughout Asia.

In Nepal, drinking water is accessible to 82 percent of the country's population but 34 percent spend 15 minutes daily fetching water, says Yadu Lal Shrestha, the human rights coordinator of the DWS country program in Nepal.

"Rich citizens are eight times more likely to have sanitation facilities than the poor," remarked Shrestha.

The rich are also 13 times more likely to have private water connections. "This is why the Lutheran World Federation Nepal's initiatives on access to water and sanitation are especially geared toward the poor and the disadvantaged," said Shrestha.

In India, the rural and urban poor are the focus of church-based organizations' initiatives on access to water and sanitation. The DWS associate program there helps build high-rise tube wells in flood-prone rural and urban poor communities. "With the high-rise tube wells, poor communities can still access clean, safe water even during floods," reported Judith Hembrom of the Lutheran World Service India Trust.

The trust helps poor communities manage their water and avoid waste. "We also train, educate and finally empower communities to be confident and bold enough to urge [the] government to provide them basic and important social services such as clean water and sanitation," added Hembrom.

In Bangladesh, Rahman said, RDRS offers interest-free loans for communities to build latrines and helps train them to urge government to install latrines and water facilities.

"For a Muslim woman like myself, who has to wash each time before I pray five times each day, water is really a sacred element that must be readily accessible," remarked Rahman. "So that desire to help others to have equal access to this vital basic resource is part of my humanity."

Lutheran World Information
Written for LWI by Manila-based correspondent Maurices Malanes.