━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
【JWF News Vol. 174】Why the Water Summit?
17 April 2019
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
◇ Contents ◇
・Foreword Why the Water Summit?
・Announcement from the Japan Water Forum
– Darvish Yu Water Fund: the 13th Project is now underway!
・Report from the Japan Water Forum
– “Message from the Water Conference for Future 2019”
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
・Foreword Why the Water Summit?
By Kotaro Takemura, Chair of the Japan Water Forum
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
In the Forward of the February issue, I reported that it was decided on 11 January 2019 that the host city for the 4th Asia-Pacific Water Summit be Kumamoto City of Japan. This time, I would like to sort out the matters about the Water Summit including the background history and why the Water Summit had been craved for, for our readers’ reference.
１．Background of the Asia-Pacific Water Summit
Water-related issues go beyond the fields of expertise as they relate to flood control, tap water, industrial water for agriculture and industries, hydraulic power generation, riverine environment, etc. As such, water has to do with a wide range of livelihood of people so that a number of governmental ministries and agencies are intricately associated with each other around the water issues. Speaking of which, in Japan, seven ministries (i.e. Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, and Ministry of the Environment) are dealing with the water issues while sharing roles respectively in a complicated manner.
As mentioned earlier, the water issues are going across multiple fields of expertise and usually cannot be solved solely by one governmental body. But, as is often the case with not only Japan but also governments overseas, a vertically segmented administrative system of governments would prevent cooperation across ministries and agencies. It is not too much to say that the difficulty in dealing with the water issues may lie in such vertical systems.
The sustainable development of society can be realized only when the water issues in the society are solved, therefore, we have to find a way to overcome the vertical systems. This is where the leadership of heads of state and government comes into the picture in order to realize the consensus building among the stakeholders from various fields.
At the 4th World Water Forum that was held in Mexico in 2006 when the establishment of the Asia-Pacific Water Forum (APWF) was agreed on, the participating heads of government and minister-level representatives who deal with the water issues strongly concerned this whole situation. Consequently it resulted in the start of the Asia-Pacific Water Summit (APWS). The First APWS was held in Beppu of Oita Prefecture, Japan, in 2007.
２．Outcomes of the Summits
The idea of “water summit of heads of state and government” created for the Asia-Pacific region has drawn a lot of attention from the world. As the information from the Water Summit spread across the world, the need to find the solution for water issues led by the heads of country has become the worldwide trend.
In this movement, Japan played a central role along with the Basic Act on the Water Cycle enacted in 2014 under the sponsorship of legislators. The Basic Act urges a range of water-related stakeholders of river basins, showing the direction towards maintaining and managing the sound water cycle in river basins.
Furthermore, the Headquarters for Water Cycle Policy was inaugurated in the Cabinet with the Prime Minister being the Director-General of the Headquarters, in order for each and all ministries to promote and support the activities of local river-basin stakeholders in Japan. In this way, the establishment of the APWF and its activities has come to influence even the cabinet and the government of Japan.
３．Significance of Holding the 4th APWS in Kumamoto City
Kumamoto City, a host city of the 4th APWS, has great features: this is one of the rarest cities in the world where waterworks , which is citizens’ lifeline, can be solely supplied by its groundwater.
The groundwater of the city is a gift resulting from the good water cycle of the wide-range of region including Mt. Aso. Acknowledging such rare advantage, Kumamoto City enacted the Kumamoto City Groundwater Preservation Ordinance in 1977. The Ordinance was then amended in 2007 to include the maintenance and preserve of the groundwater both in quality and quantity for future generations and became more comprehensive one.
A strong will of the residents and business entities of Kumamoto City to preserve the groundwater has attracted the world’s attention and the city won the Water for Life Award by the United Nations in 2013. Kumamoto City, thus, is the place where the sound water cycle has been embodied unprecedented to the world.
The term “sound water cycle” has been becoming the trend of the water field, which I think is a kind of the declaration of intention to build a sustainable river-basin society through building consensus as many a time as with diverse water-related stakeholders from source to sea.
The 4th APWS in Kumamoto City will disseminate the importance of this sound water cycle to the world, while encouraging leaders of state and governments of the region to further exert their leadership to find the solutions for the water issues, which, I believe, will surely make it one of the very noteworthy water summit in the world.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
・Announcement from the Japan Water Forum
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
– Darvish Yu Water Fund: the 13th Project is now underway!
The 13th Project supported by the Darvish Yu Water Fund is now underway in Purulia District, West Bengal State of Eastern India.
The project area does not have managed water resources that local people can use and share with others. Women go to ponds for 5 hours every day to fetch water, however, the quantity and quality of the water is not enough for consumption. They cannot put aside time to take actions to get out of poverty, because they spend much time for collecting water. In addition to that, due to low awareness on personal sanitation and hygiene, they generally defecate in open. Therefore, the habits adversely affect sanitation hygiene and their health. By constructing sustainable water and sanitation facilities and conducting awareness-raising and training on operation and maintenance, about 400 people will be able to obtain safe water all year round and better public health environment.
▼Read more▼
https://www.waterforum.jp/all/grass_roots_projects/darvish/2019/0410/?p=10946tag=en,rep_en
(Reported by Sae Ishihara, Manager)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
・Report from the Japan Water Forum
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
– “Message from the Water Conference for Future 2019”
On March 8th, the JWF hosted a symposium entitled World Water Day in Tokyo 2019, Water Conference for Future.
This initiative began in 2016 in the face of a new trends in water-related policy at home and abroad such as SDGs, the Paris Agreement, and the Water-Cycle Policy in Japan. We focus on the companies as important players working together towards achieving the SDGs and solving other environmental issues. The outcome of this symposium, “Message from the Water Conference for Future 2019”, is now available.
▼Please visit the following website for details▼
https://www.waterforum.jp/all/policy_recommendations/future/2019/0320/?p=10862tag=en,rep_en
(Reported by Sayoko Kuwahara, Manager)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
▼JWF News Archives▼
https://www.waterforum.jp/all/newsletter?tag=en,rep_en
If you wish to post information on our bulletin board, or should you prefer not to receive further JWF News, please contact us.
You can also get in touch regarding subscribing, changes of address, or any other comments or requests.
■━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━■
JWF News Vol. 174 / 17 April 2019
Japan Water Forum
6th fl., 5-4 Nihonbashi-Hakozaki-cho, Chuo-ku, Tokyo, 103-0015
TEL: 03-5645-8040 FAX: 03-5645-8041
E-mail: news[at]waterforum.jp URL: https://www.waterforum.jp/en/
※Please change [at] to @
■━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━■
