The National Water Resources Board (NWRB), under the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), spearheaded the National Water Summit Towards Water Security at Novotel Hotel, Cubao, Quezon, City last March 21, 2019. The event is concurrent with the previous National Water Pre-Summits conducted in 2017, as part of the Memorandum of Agreement signed between NWRB and University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB) for the project entitled “Towards a Comprehensive National Plan for Water Security (Roadmap Preparations) and Summit” under the leadership of Drs. Rex Demafelis and Patricia Ann Sanchez, members of the project management team.

UPLB served as the technical arm of the project to craft technical reports on different water key dimensions/sectors such as environment, economic, domestic, urban, governance, agriculture and resilience. In addition, series of committee meetings and focus group discussions were also conducted by NWRB in preparation for this event.

Usec. Rosemarie Edillon of the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) start-off the summit with the discussion on the importance of water and its underlying concerns. Water demand especially on urban centers, flood management and climate change impacts to water are some of the issues that she mentioned. Moreover, Asec. Roderick Planta of NEDA discussed the state of water in the country. He emphasized that water should be managed using Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) Framework.

Part also of the event was the presentation of cluster output based from the conducted focus group discussions and committee meetings. Cluster A includes governance, resilience and environment sectors; Cluster B is for urban and domestic sectors; and Cluster C is for agriculture and economics. Key issues and recommendations/strategies (short-term, medium-term and long-term) for each cluster were presented. (JOAquino)