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Alejandro Kirk

BEPPU - The Asia-Pacific Water Summit kicked off yesterday with both royal protocol and a sense of urgency: 700 hundred million people in the region do not have access to drinking water and two billion lack basic sanitation. Yet, most of those same people are in danger of losing their homes and lives due to heavy rains and floods.

Such figures were quoted by all speakers, prompting Prince Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands, chairman of the U.N. Secretary General Advisory Board on Water and Sanitation, to underline this as an unprecedented and positive fact.

Other speakers in the morning plenary session were Yoshiro Mori, the chair of the summit’s steering committee, Japan’s Crown Prince Naruhito and Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, Tommy Koh, head of the Asia-Pacific Water Forum (APWF), and U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon (on a video-taped message). The absence of women among the main speakers was conspicuous.

Prince Naruhito recalled that the Asia-Pacific region “is home to about 60 percent of the world’s population (but) possesses only about 40 percent of the world’s water resources.”

“Another critical problem is the frequency and magnitude of natural disasters caused by water, and 80 percent of all fatalities in these disasters occur in the Asia-Pacific region,” he stressed.

One example, Prince Naruhito said, is the recent cyclone that hit Bangladesh where some 3,000 people died. Experts have noted that while floods are a recurrent phenomenon in Bangladesh, this is the first time that water seized virtually the entire country.

The Beppu Summit is taking place simultaneously with the U.N. World Conference on Climate Change in Bali, Indonesia, which has attracted most of the media attention.

Prime Minister Fukuda, told delegates that his country has committed itself to reduce CO2 emissions, the leading cause of climate change, by 50 percent by 2050. He also stressed Japan’s disposition to participate in a “financial mechanism” to help developing countries cope with emission reduction targets without hampering economic growth.

Koh reported to the conference that an investment of just 8 billion dollars a year would suffice to halve the number of people lacking drinking water and basic sanitation, thus complying with Target 10 of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) by the 2015 deadline.

Issues such as financing, capacity development, public outreach or integrated management, rather than technology, are the main obstacles, Koh said, and those depend on a political decision to give water and sanitation “a higher priority in national, regional and international agendas.”

Integrated Water Resources Management is crucial, Prince Willem-Alexander said, recalling that 2008 is the U.N. World Sanitation Year. While good governance and transparent water services are a basic requirement, it is also necessary to have a substantial increase in funding from donors, particularly for capacity-building in developing countries, as stated in his panel’s Hashimoto Action Plan adopted in 2006.

In a “memorial speech,” Prince Naruhito recalled Japan’s centuries-old efforts to command and make sustainable use of its water resources. Embankments to control surplus water and prevent floods were already built in the 5th century, he said, and a yearly Festival of Fire and Water has taken place without interruption for 1,000 years.

Outside the convention centre, meanwhile, a small group protested against the use of water as a market commodity rather than a human right: “Water is not for Sale,” a banner read.