A water regulation expert urged immediate reforms to water laws amid declining water availability in the Philippines.
National Water Resources Board (NWRB) water rights division litigation and adjudication head Rebyanne Giselle Diaz said the country has been under water stress since 2007, with current water availability ranging from 1,000 to 1,700 cubic meters per capita.
Speaking at a Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS) forum hosted on the Socioeconomic Research Portal of the Philippines (SERP-P), Diaz stressed the need to re-examine how water is allocated. She said current Philippine legal frameworks and water allocation systems may not suffice to cope with increasing water scarcity and changing water use patterns.
“If the trajectory we want is to be able to do more with less, the law should support that effort and not directly oppose it,” Diaz said. She said the law should be more adaptable to meet changing needs, especially given the projected decline in per capita water availability.
The presentation reviewed the historical context of Philippine water laws, noting significant developments from the Spanish era to the present.
Diaz criticized the current system’s focus on “beneficial use” and the “prior appropriator rule,” which may unintentionally incentivize water waste. She said beneficial use was introduced due to fears of monopolization by large water resource entities. As a natural monopoly, she said, water supply is regulated by the principle of “beneficial use” to manage resource appropriation, while the “prior appropriator rule” allocates surface and groundwater rights based on seniority.
Diaz said this legal system discourages water conservation by requiring appropriators to consume their entire allocation or risk losing their water rights. This not only discourages effective water use but also limits innovation in water management approaches, she said.
Diaz proposed several reforms, including requiring water conservation and efficiency programs as conditions for water permits. She said this would advocate for expanding the definition of appropriation to include conservation initiatives, aligning legal incentives with the goal of sustainable water management.
“Let us look at what we can do on the regulatory side and within our current legal framework to encourage the conservation of water,” Diaz said.
She said addressing the disincentives created by the “beneficial use” and the “prior appropriator rule” is just a step toward modernizing the water allocation system to better address the country’s changing needs.
“A more proactive agency mandate will enable a more dynamic exercise of state ownership over all water resources,” Diaz said.
