ILOILO CITY – The Iloilo Business Club (IBC) is calling for a guide to address the impending challenge of water security in Western Visayas region.

“If we don’t act now, the everyday access to clean, safe water – for our households, for our farms, for our industries – will grow even more uncertain. And when water is uncertain, everything else becomes unstable,” urged IBC President Emil Diez.

The IBC gathered stakeholders in a  recent dialogue organized with the Department of Economy, Planning, and Development-6 and Aboitiz InfraCapital Inc. with the theme of “Water We Waiting For?”

While the region currently still has enough water supply, there may be a problem in the years to come, Diez said.

“In Western Visayas, we have roughly 2,036 cubic meters of water per person per year, which may sound like a lot – until we realize the global threshold for water stress is just 1,700 cubic meters,” warned Diez.

He warned that water threshold on the national level has dropped to 1,373 cubic meters per person which is below the global threshold.

Water stress was also worsened by almost 50 percent of “water districts across the country losing over 30 percent of their water supply due to outdated pipes, leaks, and system inefficiencies.”

DEPDev Undersecretary Carlos Bernardo Abad Santos urged the private sector to have convergence with the government sector in bridging the gaps for infrastructure and service delivery.

Santos said that the Integrated Water Resource Management Framework (IWRMF) must be implemented to address challenges of overlapping policies and mandates.