Tokyo - Leaders of Asia-Pacific nations and territories
agreed Tuesday to accelerate their efforts to tackle urgent
water-related problems in the region.
The First Asia-Pacific Water Summit invited about 300 government
and industry leaders as well as environmental experts to the southern
Japanese city of Beppu to discuss water sanitation, natural
disasters, rising sea levels and melting glaciers caused by global
warming.
On the summit's second and final day, some participants showed
frustration at the slow reaction of the region's governments as
concerns mount over rising sea levels.
Higher sea levels, for instance, have caused fresh- and saltwater
to mix and have made it difficult for the island nation of Kiribati
in the central Pacific to secure safe drinking water.
Others pointed out the need to implement more technological and
financial support to prevent droughts and floods.
Summit participants called on the private and public sectors to
better cooperate in securing drinking water in the region, where
deaths by diarrhoea are still common.
'Sanitation and hygiene have in fact more impacts on disease rates
than water quantities do,' Clarissa Brocklehurst, coordinator for the
UN Water Task Force on Sanitation, was quoted as saying by the Kyodo
News Agency.
The participants also sought political intervention in resolving
water-related problems in the region and proposed to have a similar
discussion at the Group of Eight summit of leading industrialized
countries in July in the northern Japanese town of Toyako.
Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda said at the summit's opening
ceremony Monday that he hoped to take 'enormous power and wisdom'
from the meetings to the G8 summit.
On Monday, the leaders called for enhancing regional cooperation
and commitment to improve water management amid increasing natural
disasters caused by global warming.
More than 80 per cent of the deaths caused by water-related
disasters in the world between 2001 and 2005 occurred in the
Asia-Pacific region, summit organizers said.
About 700 million people live without access to safe drinking
water while 1.9 billion people are without hygienic toilet facilities
in the region, they added.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
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