ADB Water Week 2004
Water for the Poor: Setting the Rules and Finding the Money
ADB Headquarters, Manila, Philippines
26-30 January 2004
Is there conspiracy against the poor? Why is it that after concerted efforts spanning decades, the poor still does not have access to safe drinking water? Have conventional mindsets or vested interests stymied progress in this direction?
The ADB has organized its 2nd Water Week to stimulate knowledge development in the water sector, particularly on the issue of water for the poor. The theme for the 2004 ADB Water Week is "Water for the Poor: Setting the Rules and Finding the Money."
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Making Partnerships Work
"Government, civil society, and financiers are taking incremental steps to find solutions to common problems, but we should not expect magic solutions." Ravi Narayanan, WaterAid Director, highlighted this in his keynote address yesterday, adding that these actions should instead be regarded as a deepening of understanding that leads to more focused actions. Narayanan also observed that discussions of the past days underlined the need for better partnership, and stressed that this should be based on a common understanding of poverty-- whether land poor, income poor, or the poverty of exclusion because of caste or ethnic origin. He noted that gender exclusion cuts across all of them as women experience all these types of poverty.
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ADB Recognizes Good Practices in Water Sector
Good practices of ADB staff in implementing ADB's Water Policy were recognized at Water Week yesterday during the closing ceremony led by ADB Vice President, Liqun Jin.
Individual ADB Water Achievement Awards were presented to: Pieter Smidt for his work in water and poverty reduction and NGO collaboration in Viet Nam; Eva Mayerhofer for rural water supply delivery improvements and NGO collaboration she helped implement in Nepal; and Jacques Jeugmans for his contribution to water supply delivery improvements in Indonesia, linking the health and water sectors.
The ADB Water Achievement Award for Best Project Team went to the Samoa Sanitation and Drainage Project Team of Nancy Convard, Helen Baxter and Lyailya Nazarbekova.
Congratulations to the awardees.
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ADB Water Week Concludes
Water Week sessions ended yesterday on a high note with ADB's Vice President Liqun Jin calling for better leadership and partnerships, and advocating that such partnerships be built on the complementary strengths of the partners.
In the wrap-up session, key dominant messages during the 3-day discussions were highlighted, among them the need to effectively target the poor to ensure that development efforts reach them. Also highlighted was the need to improve the poor's access to financing, not just from external sources but also from their own resources, and the participants' main recommendation to decentralize financing to a level more easily accessible to the poor.
At the end of the sessions, the participants agreed that the main message from the Water Week should be: simplify the rules, decentralize the money.
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