News and Events

1^st Southeast Asia Water Forum
Strengthening Regional Capacity Through Best Practices in Integrated Water Resources Management

17-21 November 2003
Chiang Mai, Thailand

Forum Declaration

The forum recognizes the need to integrate the management of water sectors and issues including water supply, sanitation, floods and droughts, degradation of the environment, food security, livelihoods of the poor, and that increasing variability is due to human intervention and changes in climate.

The Forum, comprising stakeholders from all sectors, recognizes the strength of the ASEAN framework as a driver for development and respectfully recommends to representatives of the ASEAN countries that the action be taken to further improve and advance better practices for water management in the region.

Recalling the commitments of the Millennium Declaration and the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation, including the goal to develop plans for Integrated Water Resources Management by 2005, and the 3rd World Water Forum, we, the participants to the 1^st Southeast Asia Water Forum, recommend the following practical actions:

1. To ensure participation of all stakeholders to

• Link the management of ecosystems at all scales, from the river to coastal ecosystems and from the local to the basin level
• Establish and apply the ecosystem approach to IWRM
• Setup and strengthen stakeholder forums and River Basin Organizations for dialogue, conflict resolution and collaborative management
• Establish flow regimes that ensure the maintenance of biodiversity and ecological and economic productivity of the basin in a sustainable and equitable manner
• Ensure that development decisions reflect the concerns of all, with consideration to poverty and gender issues

2. Develop legal and policy frameworks and heighten awareness of existing frameworks to promote regional collaboration, through

• Forging appropriate links between national and regional river basin organizations and community organizations to improve coordination and collaborative development of knowledge and know-how
• Forging appropriate links between water issues such as water supply and sanitation
• Setting up the legal system for water-related disaster management

3. Apply economic, social and cultural valuation and implement appropriate financial incentives to

• Foster proper economic, social, and cultural valuation of natural and environmental resources to restore degraded and depleted resources and establish environmental fund
• Ensure equitable delivery of water supply and sanitation services, especially to the poor, maintain ecosystem services and the functionality of water infrastructure

4. Build and strengthen capacity

• By promoting formal and informal education, raising awareness, and resource mobilization and resource sharing about IWRM for decision-makers, professionals, communities and NGOs in necessary social and natural sciences and know-how
• Institutionalizing mechanisms to exchange lessons learnt, local experiences, successful approaches, appropriate technologies and use of media in disseminating success stories on integrated river basin management, at all levels

Specific Recommendations

• Establish ASEAN Senior Officials on Water (ASOW)
• Start a process of consultation to put IWRM into practice by 2005
• Enhance water safety, which is part of IWRM, and encourage cooperation between governmental, non-governmental and private sector activities, aimed at mitigating the negative effects of floods and droughts, including participation in the newly established International Flood Network and Network of Asian River Basin Organizations
• Continue efforts for regional coordination and cooperation on shared river basins, including the establishment of regional and country hubs to promote IWRM
• International and regional organizations should support a Southeast Asian benchmarking program to improve performance of IWRM
• Identify ways to improve and transform large rice irrigation systems for participatory and decentralized management