MCJ: Our Water, Our Life—Defend It from Corporate Control

On World Water Day, we affirm what our communities have always known: water is life. It is not a commodity for profit, not a resource for plunder, and not a privilege for the few. Yet today, across the world and in Mindanao, water is being taken, controlled, and denied—revealing a crisis not only of scarcity, but of power and injustice.

Globally, around 2.1 billion people still lack safely managed drinking water, while 3.4 billion lack safely managed sanitation and 1.7 billion lack basic hygiene services. Nearly half of the world’s population experiences water scarcity during parts of the year. Women and girls spend an estimated 250 million hours daily just to collect water. At the same time, 70% of freshwater is consumed by agriculture, largely driven by export-oriented and corporate-controlled production.

This is not accidental. This is how a system works—where water flows toward profit, not toward people.

In the Philippines, the crisis is stark. Around 40 million Filipinos still lack reliable access to safe water, while only 48.5% of the population has safely managed drinking water. Meanwhile, 180 of 421 principal rivers are polluted, poisoned by industrial waste, plantation runoff, and unchecked development. Government itself warns of looming “water bankruptcy,” yet solutions remain fragmented, underfunded, and disconnected from the realities of communities.

But in Mindanao, the crisis cuts deeper.

It is not only that water is scarce.
It is that communities are losing control over their water.

In Sitio Kiantig, Bukidnon, Manobo-Pulangiyon families recall what has been taken from them:

“The water used to be clear. Now it smells of chemicals. The children’s skin burns after bathing.”

Displaced since 2017, they now live along the roadside. Their water—once flowing freely from their ancestral lands—is now contaminated by nearby plantations. Families rely on stagnant pools for drinking and washing. Children fall sick. Mothers worry. What was once life-giving has become a daily risk.

In Marawi City, eight years after the Marawi Siege, around 70,000 people remain displaced. Many still live in transitory shelters where water access is unreliable and sanitation is broken. Families are forced to buy water at high prices from private vendors. Shared toilets are overcrowded and deteriorating. Children suffer recurring illness—not because water is absent, but because safe water is inaccessible.

These are not isolated stories. These are the lived realities of communities across Mindanao—where water insecurity is tied to displacement, environmental destruction, and unequal control over land and resources.

Across the island, river systems are weakening. Watersheds are being cleared. Rivers are silting, polluted, and diverted. Their ability to sustain life and protect communities from floods and drought is eroding.

At the same time, the climate crisis intensifies these conditions. Mindanao is becoming drier overall, even as rainfall grows more erratic and destructive. Flooding increases. Drought deepens. In 2024, the Bangsamoro region was placed under a state of calamity due to El Niño—exposing how fragile water systems have become for already vulnerable communities.

Water insecurity is also a public health crisis. In the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, around 20% of households still practice open defecation, reflecting deep and persistent gaps in water, sanitation, and hygiene systems.

But we must be clear: this crisis is not simply natural.

It is driven by a system that prioritizes profit over people.

Across Mindanao, large-scale plantations, mining operations, energy projects, and infrastructure expansion continue to encroach on ancestral lands and critical watersheds. Forests are cleared. Rivers are contaminated. Springs disappear. These are not isolated projects—they are part of a broader pattern of extractive and export-oriented development, enabled by state policies and weak regulation, where land and water are treated as commodities.

While corporations accumulate profit, communities are displaced.
While resources are extracted, ecosystems are destroyed.
While wealth is concentrated, people are left without water.

In Kiantig, plantation expansion has brought contamination and displacement.
In Marawi, prolonged displacement and failed rehabilitation have produced water insecurity and dependency.

In both cases, communities have lost control over water systems essential to their survival.

For Indigenous Peoples and Moro communities, this loss is not only material. Water is inseparable from land, culture, and identity. To lose water is to lose livelihood, dignity, and self-determination.

And yet, across Mindanao, communities continue to resist.

They document violations.
They assert their rights.
They defend their rivers, springs, and watersheds—often at great risk.

The struggle for water is inseparable from the struggle for land, justice, and self-determination.

To defend water is to defend watersheds.
To defend watersheds is to defend ancestral land.
To defend ancestral land is to defend the people’s future.

In this critical moment, we call on all sectors to unite:

We call on workers, farmers, fisherfolk, urban poor communities, Indigenous Peoples, Moro communities, women, youth, church people, professionals, and all defenders of the environment—to stand together in defense of water and life.

We call on local governments and public institutions to be accountable to the people, not to corporate interests.

We call on the international community to stand in solidarity with communities on the frontlines of environmental injustice.

The crisis demands not only recognition—but action:

• Protect and rehabilitate watersheds, rivers, and aquifers
• Hold corporations and state actors accountable for pollution and environmental destruction
• Cancel destructive projects that poison and deplete water sources
• Uphold Indigenous Peoples’ and Moro communities’ rights to land, water, and self-determined stewardship
• Ensure accessible, affordable, and climate-resilient water and sanitation systems for all
• Strengthen and stand with community-led water governance, monitoring, and defense

These are not acts of charity.
These are demands for justice.

We refuse the lie that there is no water crisis until cities run dry.
The crisis is already here—in upland communities, evacuation centers, farms, fishing grounds, and ancestral territories turned into sacrifice zones.

The issue is not simply lack of water.
It is the systematic destruction, privatization, and unequal control of water.

Water is not for profit.
Water is not for plunder.

Water is life. Water is a right.

On this World Water Day, we stand with the peoples of Mindanao—with the Manobo-Pulangiyon of Kiantig, with the displaced of Marawi, and with all communities defending their water and their future.

Because the fight for water
is the fight for life.