The objective of the Capacity Building for Legal and Social Advancement in the Philippines or “CALESA” is to help remedy the following interdependent problems in Philippine legal education:1. The dearth of academic research in law schools.2. The inability of professors and students to access the source materials of their own civil law tradition, and developments in other civil law traditions due to weak multilingual interest and skills.3. Inability of the legal profession to contribute significant academic (as opposed to professional) expertise to the modernization of outdated legal codes, the protection of human rights and the rule of law, and advancement of ASEAN integration, despite their critical and/or geo-strategic importance.At the root of these problems is a systemic defect in Philippine legal education – the lack of programs in law schools that are focused on developing academic expertise and generating research. Virtually all of the country’s 108 law schools are professional. This means that they are geared towards producing legal practitioners. This creates a knowledge deficit that prevents the legal profession from more effectively combining law and policy to deal with some of the most pressing needs of society.Upon CALESA’s completion, it is envisioned that the Philippines’ leading law schools will adopt curricular innovations that are focused on research, multilingualism, human rights and the rule of law, regional integration and comparative law in a manner that is consistent with the Bologna process in order to facilitate portability with EU universities. Because these institutions are among the thought leaders in the field of legal education, the expectation is to initiate a cascade effect whose benefits will in time reach the other law schools, the Judiciary, the legal profession, the legal system, and Philippine society.

Half of the world's cities with populations above 100,000 are located within water basins where over half of the available water supply is depleted for part of the year. These water-stressed cities are finding it extremely difficult and expensive to secure the additional water supplies needed to support their growth. Water security is of particular concern for Filipino cities, which have been designated amongst the worst in Asia for urban water security. Changing climate and increasing urban population density will put more stress on their water resources. Current projections of climate up to 2050 suggest the Philippines will become warmer, with increasing temperature and decreasing rainfall during the dry season and more extreme rainfall events during the wet season. This will undoubtedly exacerbate both water availability during periods of drought and the magnitude of flood events during periods of heavy rainfall. This susceptibility has led to the Philippines being consistently ranked near the top of countries most at risk to climate change. In addition to water stresses from a changing climate, population is expected to increase by ~50% up to 2050, with urban population set to double over the same period. This will further exacerbate pressures on future water resources. The influence of climate and population change will have an acute impact on groundwater, which currently supplies more than 50% of the potable water supply and 85% of the piped water supply in the Philippines. Groundwater is strategically and economically important to current and future water supply and is the principle source of dry season river flows, which in turn are often used for potable supply. Despite the high reliance on groundwater resources, reasonable coverage of groundwater datasets and several regional-level groundwater management plans, there has been little in the way of real-time monitoring, routine monthly forecasting or impact assessment of climate and population stressors. Through a programme of data gathering, knowledge exchange, fieldwork, numerical modelling and stakeholder engagement the Philippines Groundwater Outlook (PhiGO) project seeks to undertake assessments of population and climate change impacts on regional groundwater resources and translate these into usable forecasts of flood and drought risk. There are two distinct timeframes at which uptake and potential benefits of the project will be realised. Short term, seasonal-scale forecasts will aid in reactive preparedness, whilst long term, decadal-scale forecasts can be used to take proactive steps towards reducing the future physical and economic impacts of extreme hydrometeorological events. To better understand the potential socio-economic impacts of groundwater level extremes and potential water management strategies, PhiGO is also focussed on quantifying the cascading impacts of flood and drought through key infrastructure and analysing the cost-benefit of differing water management and urban planning scenarios.