"Imagine the entire world as a bucket of water", urge Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union plugs, aired in the Philippines and 54 other countries. "The fresh water that we can use would equal only a spoonful".

For 2007 "World Water Day", those plugs hammer home an ignored fact:.
You can not drink over 96 percent of this planet's supply. They're salt-laced oceans.

"Water, water everywhere/ Nor any drop to drink ", mutters Coleridge's "Ancient Mariner", through parched lips.

There's no substitute for water. The body needs a minimum of three liters a day to get by. We drink or we die. But more people drink from the same well today. There were 36.6 million Filipinos in 1970. Population may now have passed the 85 million marker.

Waste and weather changes, spur competing demands for the limited unevenly-spread balance of this resource. Deep wells turning brackish, as in Cebu, or dry as in Paranaque, signal "the new politics of scarcity." "The challenge of 21st century water governance may prove to be among the most daunting faced in human history," says the UN's new study: "Power, Poverty and the Global Water Crisis."

Globally, diarrhea kills more people than TB or malaria, World Health Organization data shows. Here, diarrhea kills far more than salvaging by uniformed assassins, communist pogroms, vigilantes in Davao and Cebu lumped together. This disease also afflicts 1,997, per 100,000 population, clustered mostly in poor areas.

Governance systems "determine who gets what water, when and how", the Fourth World Water Forum in Mexico City heard from the triennial report : "Water: A Shared Responsibility" But "mismanagement, corruption, lack of appropriate institutions, bureaucratic inertia and a shortage of new investments in building human capacity as well as physical infrastructure" interlock in an emerging water crisis.

Ironically, this most lethal of threats is almost totally-ignored by today's candidates who seek mandates to govern. There's a disconnect between our daily lives, water's life-sustaining role and the on-going election campaign..

For many of us, "water simply flows from a faucet. We think little of it beyond this immediate point of contact." The "Genuine Opposition, trumpets it is less-corrupt than an administration that retorts: Sez who?. We're titillated by marital scandals from Jose Miguel Arroyo to Kris Aquino. And Erap wants another pass from his luxury detention villa...

Yet, in 29 provinces, a quarter of people quaff from easily-contaminated wells, the UN's Philippine Human Development Report notes. These include : Apayao, Benguet, Nueva Vizcaya, Capiz, Bukidnon, North Cotabato, Ilocos Norte, Kalinga, Guimaras, Zamboanga del Norte, Bohol, Quezon, Masbate, Occidental and Oriental Misamis, Camarines Norte, Agusan del Sur, Leyte, Negros Oriental and Occidental -- plus the entire Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

This is campaign blindness. It refuses to face up to consequences from water and sanitation deficits that spill across generations. "Repeated bouts of diahrrea.are associated with disadvantages that stretch from cradle to grave," the UN report adds.

Victims experience weight loss, stunting, vitamin deficiency., etc It also results in "cognitive infirmities". As a teacher sadly notes: "Their elevators will never reach the top floor."

Government agencies, research institutions and development banks unanimously agree that Philippine cities, Davao, Baguio, Angeles, Bacolod, Iloilo and Cagayan de Oro , are becoming "water-critical areas". ( Water ) has become a critically constrained resource...particularly in areas around Manila and Cebu, threatening socio-economic development," a World Bank study observes.

Cebu mayor Tomas Osmena's reaction is "total denial". The assessment is exaggerated, he sneers. But a sneer is not policy. Nor will it add a drop to demand that relentlessly doubles, from 68 million cubic meters today, to 137 million cubic meters, in 2030. And his city overdraws twice the amount it's limited aquifers can recharge. Aquifers are increasingly contaminated by salt. And deepwells are conking out. "Paraplegic governance guarantees that today's scarcities in Cebu will be tomorrow's shortages," Inquirer has pointed out.

"Political leaders vastly underestimate the influence of water scarcity on food production, natural systems and stability," the Worldwatch Institute's Sandra Postel notes. "Some unpleasant surprises may lie in store for them."

Industry and municipal use accounts for a liter and a half out of every 10 liters pumped up. Seven is funneled into irrigation, mostly for food production. Food production would be crippled if water supplies falter.

When El-Nino droughts affected the Angat Maasin river system, for example, irrigation lines to farms were shut. But those to industries remained open. Many farmers went into debt and lost their land because water rights were vested in the National Irrigation Agency, not in a water users association. " The limited rights of farmers , coupled with the political power of industrial lobbies in Manila, produced an inequitable distribution of adjustment costs," the UN report notes.

Citizens must demand that their candidates pay attention to who is not getting essential water and why. "Put poor people at the center of water service provision," the UN recommends. And they should be empowered to discipline often insensitve water agencies. "Create at the same time incentives for water service providers to listen."

Plans for water must be drawn up. And above all, "national policies and political leadership matter." And, as candidates seek votes, their commitment to water policies must be secured. After ballots are cast, we have learned to our sorrow, that Mr Jeykll can become Dr Hyde.

(E-mail: juan_mercado@boholchronicle.com)