Water Forum
ADB Makes Big Splash at Kyoto Water Forum
Participants make more than 100 commitments on water actions
By Penny Poole ( ppoole@adb.org )
Consultant, Water Awareness Program
IMPRESSIVE Main stage of the
Kyoto International Conference Hall
The Asian Development Bank (ADB) participated in the 3rd World Water Forum with a large delegation, led by President Tadao Chino and comprising Vice-President Myoung-Ho Shin, three Directors General, and 145 ADB-sponsored delegates from 29 developing member countries who contributed to the sessions organized by ADB.
The Forum, held in Kyoto, Shiga, and Osaka — which share Japan’s Yodo River basin — was the third and largest such event since the 1st World Water Forum in Morocco in 1997. A reported 24,000 people from 182 countries and 43 international organizations participated in hundreds of information-sharing sessions in the three venues from 16 to 23 March.
While the 2nd Forum in The Hague in 2000 focused on water visions and frameworks for action, this 3rd Forum focused on actions, learning from actions, and catalyzing further action. Participants in the forum made more than 100 new commitments on water actions.
ADB played a lead role at the Forum, organizing five major themes, all with poverty as a central or underlying focus. As the lead agency of the Water and Poverty Initiative, ADB organized the plenary sessions on Water and Poverty and four working sessions on water security, disasters, and gender issues related to water. Other ADB-supported themes were Water in Small Island Countries, Water and Cities, Regional Cooperation for Shared Water Resources in Central Asia, and Poverty and Floods.
The water sector is fundamentally important to ADB’s work for poverty reduction and sustainable development. More than 25% of ADB’s active loans are for water projects or projects that involve significant water components.
In summarizing the progress made during the Forum, Wouter Lincklaen Arriens, ADB Lead Water Resources Specialist, commented that “the sessions showed how good water actions are being taken all around the world. The Forum featured debate on a variety of approaches to scaling up and replicating good examples to improve water security for the poor, particularly in rural areas.”
As President Chino said at the closing session on Water and Poverty, “We come away from Kyoto with a mandate for ADB and its partners to work together in pursuing actions at all levels to achieve our vision of ‘Water for All.’”
Partnership for Water and Asian Cities Program
UN-HABITAT Executive Director Anna Tibaijuka (left) and ADB President Tadao Chino after signing the MOU for the Water and Asian Cities Program
ADB signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on 18 March with the United Nations’ Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT), the UN agency responsible for promoting sustainable urbanization, to set up a Water for Asian Cities Program.
ADB President Tadao Chino and UN-HABITAT Executive Director Anna Tibaijuka attended the signing ceremony in Osaka, which hosted the 3rd World Water Forum.
The Program aims to build the capacity of Asian cities to secure and manage pro-poor investments in water supply and sanitation, and help the region meet the Millennium Development Goal of halving, by 2015, the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water.
The Program envisages a pipeline of $10 million in grants from ADB and UN-HABITAT for the first two phases and $500 million in ADB loans for water and sanitation projects in cities across Asia over the next 5 years. Additional support for the Program’s capacity-building activities has been committed by the Government of the Netherlands with a grant of $2.8 million.
ADB also announced three other initiatives at the Forum: the Gender and Water Partnership, Rural Water and Poverty Action Initiative, and Network of Asian River Basin Organizations.
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