Visioning of the Water-secure and Resilient Philippines

Storytelling is our powerful catalyst to drive transformational change.

Inspired after reading the chapter “Vision for the Future” of Dr. Gleick’s book.

“Unless we can picture a future where everyone prospers — ourselves, our families, our communities — then that future will never materialize. A dream we can’t share is a dream denied.”

The Radiance of a New Dawn: Envisioning the Water-Secure Future

The year is 2050. Rosa typically starts her day walking on the serene shores of Manila Bay. Amidst the rhythmic sounds of waves along the restored Manila Bay, she looks out over waters that sparkle with promise. Their clarity is more than aesthetic — it’s a symbol of the country’s triumph over decades of water pollution and mismanagement. The days when the bay was more plastic and sewage than pristine are now a fading memory.

The radiant hues of dawn over a revitalized Manila Bay reveal the transformed metropolitan area that artfully blends tradition with innovation. After admiring the sunrise and strolling along the bay’s rejuvenated shores, Rosa hails an e-kalesa, a modern take on the nation’s traditional horse-drawn carriage, now powered sustainably.

She boards the green e-kalesa, equipped with a special feature — it harvests rainwater, purifies it, and redistributes it to communities in need. It weaves through green thoroughfares of Luzon’s megapolis where peri-urban farming has become the norm.

Today, Rosa’s destination is Green Haven, an expansive water-efficient urban farm that sprawls over reclaimed industrial zones. This haven being operated by the civil society organization Luntian includes a farm school and a grid of closed-loop aquaponic systems, underlaid by solar panels that serve dual purposes — harnessing the sun’s energy and acting as temperature regulators for the aquatic habitats below. Freshwater fish flourish alongside leafy greens, providing both food and economic security to the urban center populace.

Here, an ICT-enabled smart water system manages the irrigation, ensuring each plant receives the right amount of water and recycling the excess for the fish in the adjoining aquaponics system.

Before leaving, she harvests fresh vegetables and collects fish from the aquaponics system. This bounty of nutritious food will be today’s meals for her family. The e-kalesa then takes Rosa home, where solar panels stand on rooftops, powering her home and charging the e-kalesa for its next journey.

Her home is a marvel of eco-innovation. Every tap and water appliance including the toilet is fitted with smart sensors that monitor water usage, ensuring efficiency and preventing waste. Even wastewater isn’t wasted but gets a second life, treated and used for watering plants and replenishing the soil in her garden.

During her midday break, Rosa is on a holographic call with innovators in Visayas. They have been adapting ancient Filipino water conservation techniques like rice terraces, integrating them with contemporary technology to create resilient community water systems. These grassroots efforts, backed by local and international partners, are ensuring water access for all Filipinos.

She is discussing now with her team in Visayas the upcoming project “Paglaom”, an initiative that provides compact, current-powered desalination to coastal villages. If the team will be successful, their portable modular desalination unit which is a compact 3D-printed device that harnesses tidal energy to convert seawater into potable water, could bring hope to far-flung islets and coastal barangays.

Later in the day, Rosa liaises with water advocates from the private sector in Mindanao. They’ve been championing the rejuvenation of wetlands, marrying ancestral Filipino wisdom with modern science. These wetlands, once disregarded, now serve as natural filtration systems, replenishing underground aquifers and housing diverse fauna. A massive mangrove restoration project is underway. Communities, once battling coastal erosion and storm surges, now watch as these green sentinels shield them, while also providing a habitat for marine life and boosting the local economy with sustainable fisheries.

In the evening, Rosa cooks with freshly harvested produce while her grandson Miguel shares his virtual dive into the thriving Pasig River, now lined with regenerated mangroves and teeming with aquatic life. Miguel excitedly shares holographic clips from his school’s virtual expedition to the rejuvenated Pasig River. This digital immersion also allowed him to swim with a school of fishes that have returned to its waters and bask in the verdant mangroves. Once considered ecologically dead, today, the Pasig River is vibrant with life, thanks to an AI-blockchain system that monitors water quality, helping to maintain the river’s health.

Over the rich aromas of their meal, Rosa also shares tales of the old Philippines, marked by water poverty, ecological fragility, and socio-economic disparities.

But the undying Filipino spirit of Bayanihan, she emphasizes, was their beacon. Their spirit turned adversity into opportunity and charted a course to shared prosperity. The government also invested in sustainably managing water while upholding social justice. Local communities in collaboration with private sectors protected watersheds and restored nature. Researchers, scientists, and engineers developed not only advanced clean water technologies but also introduced frugal and social innovations to the community. For example, it led to the dawn of e-kalesa, to visionary community-driven water projects, to satellite-enhanced irrigation mirroring the innovation of Banaue’s ancient terraces, and to the embrace of nature with wetland and mangrove restorations across the country.

Persistent climate challenges like typhoons and drought remain, but Rosa explains their climate-resilient home like many other homes in the country is built to withstand storms, equipped with rainwater harvesting and flood-resistant features. As Miguel listens, pride swells in his heart at this legacy of resilience.

The Philippines becomes the 17th largest economy globally through its visionary blue-green economic reforms. By investing in human capital and sustainably managing natural resources, the country channeled resilience into truly inclusive growth.

Rosa also beams with pride as she recounts how Filipinos overcame those adversities in the past. The Philippines emerged as a global leader in frugal green water technologies tailored for developing regions. Filipino experts are now exporting their knowledge products and helping to catalyze change across Asia and Africa. Philippines-led programs seed sustainable solutions from decentralized systems to wetland restoration.

Their conversation is interrupted by another holographic call from Lila, Miguel’s friend living on one of the small islands in the MIMAROPA region. She excitedly describes the small-scale water purification device providing clean water to her village. She also tells them about the agricultural drones that gently mist their crops with precise irrigation. Rosa smiles, listening to the lively conversation between Miguel and Lila.

As the day ends, Rosa feels deep satisfaction. The dream of a water-secure Philippines — a nation where water is not just clean, but cherished, conserved, and efficiently managed — is gradually unfolding. Every day leads to transformational change, a step towards a greener, more inclusive sustainable future.

The radiance of this new dawn reflects the vision, spirit, and innovation that shaped the water-secure and resilient future for the Philippines.

Thank you for reading!

Please do share if you think this article or any similar one is informative and would help others to understand the situation at hand or change peoples’ opinions. The time to advocate for a water-secure and resilient Philippines is NOW.

The author is a Professor of Chemical Engineering at De La Salle University, teaching courses in the Environmental Engineering Graduate Program. He is currently the Chair of the Engineering and Industrial Research Division of the National Research Council of the Philippines (2022–2024). He co-leads the Research Program on Water-Energy-Nutrient Nexus in the Cities of the Future funded by the UK-Philippines Newton Prize 2019 to demonstrate the potential of recovered phosphate-based fertilizer from domestic wastewater to grow crops. His views are independent of the views of his affiliations.