16th GOVERNING COUNCIL MEETING OF THE ASIA-PACIFIC WATER FORUM AND 2nd PREPARATORY MEETING OF THE ASIA-PACIFIC REGION FOR THE WORLD WATER FORUM 7
The 16th Governing Council Meeting of the Asia-Pacific Water Forum (APWF) and the 2nd preparatory meeting of the Asia-Pacific regional process for the 7th World Water Forum were held in Seoul on the 19th of November 2014 and attended by 44 representatives from the APWF lead organizations.
The program of the meeting was focused on the regional preparatory process for the 7th World Water Forum.
Three presentations were made by the organizers of WWF7 in the first part of the meeting. Mr. Yangjin Oh, Director, the National committee for the World Water Forum gave general information on preparations to the Forum. Mr. Youn-Gil Kim from the Daegu Convention Bureau told about accommodation plans for forum participants and transportation (how to get to the venue by plane, train or car from the Incheon International Airport). Ms. Sue-yong Kim, Manager of the national committee presented the approved 54 regional process sessions and last amendments in the regional process, as well as explained an idea of merging regional sessions presented by different regions under the same topic into sub-regional blocks.
The second part of the meeting included hearing and adoption of the 8 regional APWF sessions and two synthesis sessions under umbrella of APWF as approved by the International Regional Process Committee (10 sessions in total):
Session 1 – “Water and cities” presented by UNESCO (Indonesia) and the organization group members.
Session 2 – “Water and green growth” presented by K-Water and UNESCAP.
Session 3 – “Water and Food” presented by FAO.
Session 4 – “Climate change, water related disasters and mountain water security” presented by ICIMOD and ICHARM.
Session 5 – “IWRM” presented by the Network of Asian River Basin Organizations (NARBO).
Session 6 – “Rural water and sanitation” presented by ADB.
Session 7 – “Development of cooperation in the Aral Sea Basin to mitigate consequences of the environmental catastrophe” presented by V.Sokolov, regional coordinator of GWP CACENA.
Session 8 – “Transboundary problems of Northeast Asia” presented by the Korean Water Forum.
Session 9-10 – Asia-Pacific Regional Synthesis and Commitment Session at the 7th World Water Forum was presented by the APWF Secretariat - the Japanese Water Forum. They demonstrated a draft program of the regional synthesis session, where the results of the above eight regional sessions would be presented and recommendations on follow-up steps for policy makers would be given.
The third part of the meeting included presentations of two additional proposals for other two sessions within the framework of the APWR regional process:
Session 11 – “Trilateral Forum on Water Cooperation between China, South Korea and Japan” presented by the Trilateral Cooperation Secretariat.
Session 12 – “Hydrological services in Asia under rapidly changing conditions (climate, water management, policies, etc.)” presented by Korea Institute of Civil Engineering and Building Technology.
The participants came to an agreement that those proposals should be included additionally in the agenda of WWF7 after consultation with the Forum organizers and the International Committee of the Regional Process.
The following reports were made during the fourth and final part of the meeting:
- Future schedule of APWF
- Progress updates on the ADB’s initiative including the Asian Water Development Outlook (AWDO-2017) and Asia 2050 Study
- Preparation to the 3rd Asia-Pacific Water Summit. It is planned to hold the 3rd APWF Summit in May-June 2017. The host country of the Summit is to be decided until December 2015.
- Progress report of the new science and technology process
- Call for partnership to strengthen the Asia-Pacific Citizen’s Forum.
Sokolov V.,
Regional Coordinator of GWP CACENA
|