THE 50th Asian Development Bank (ADB) Annual Meeting (May 4-7) in Yokohama, Japan, ended with an encouraging note, as a growing Asia continues to create huge potential for infrastructure investment, promoting regional and global prosperity.

The meeting also highlighted development challenges, as greater effort on promoting equality, alleviating poverty, and responding to disaster and climate change will help achieve Sustainable Development Goals in the region.

The following is a summary of some of the insights that had emerged in media briefings or panel discussions during the meeting which impressed Shanghai Daily reporter Wan Lixin, who covered the meeting, as particularly relevant.

Deeper engagement

Ayumi Konishi, Director General for ADB’s East Asia Department

Last year we celebrated 30 years of ADB-PRC partnership in Shanghai, as our operation in China keeps growing.

Last year ADB approved sovereign loans to the PRC totaling US$1.78 billion, comprising 11 loans projects in agriculture, natural resources, energy, transport, and urban and social infrastructure and services.

As the PRC is transitioning to a new growth model that emphasizes quality and sustainability, supported by innovation, ADB will support the government’s reform agenda by fostering inclusive growth, helping the PRC mainstream environmentally sustainable development, and promoting regional and South-South cooperation.

ADB will be particularly focused on addressing development challenges that money alone cannot address.

Of these projects is a US$50 million public-private partnership project for improved elderly care services to be provided by private sector service providers in Yichang, Hubei Province. Given the paramount importance of knowledge sharing, in 2016, ADB developed 58 knowledge products, and organized 80 knowledge-sharing activities focused on the PRC’s development issues.

Governance vital to water solution

Amy Leung, Deputy Director General for ADB’s Sustainable Development and Climate Change Department

With growing demand for food, energy, and water, recent estimates indicated up to 3.4 billion people could be living in water-stressed areas of Asia by 2050.

Dirty water can be a problem, but too much or too little water can all be problems too. Physical solutions can work, but the most efficient way to make such solutions work is good governance. In most countries it is not so much about lack of water than about the right governance.

But managing water is often not so easy, as water is often cross-boundary.

Although water is often seen as a public good, it needs to be treated, or treated again, before it can be used, and all that requires funding.

So asset management and good governance are probably some of the most important considerations to ensure water security.

Overall the region shows a positive tend in strengthening water security since 2013, when 38 out of 49 countries were assessed as water insecure. In 2016, the number has fallen to 29 countries.

Water security challenges remain. A staggering 1.7 billion people lack access to basic sanitation. Growing population and rapid urbanization mean the region’s limited water resources would be under enormous pressure.

Climate change challenges are even more daunting. This is being worsened by lack of coherent response, blamed on poor governance and lack of institutional capacity .

Increasing use of water will mean lower per capita water resources. Our responsibility is to alert governments, as Asia cannot sustain growth unless water is brought into the equation.

Hence the importance of dissemination of knowledge in moving towards a more water-secure Asia-Pacific.

Water security is not only about providing sufficient water for households and economic activities, but also about ensuring healthy ecosystems, and resilence to water-related disasters.

Specifically, it includes increased water use efficiency, water and climate, integrated water resources management, and expanded sanitation and wastewater management.

Increased water use efficiency includes increased water productivity in irrigated agriculture, and non-revenue water reduction in water supply. Water leakage is a big issue. While personal consumption of water can be not so significant, the leakage in the pipe can be a lot. If we can manage such leakages by 50 percent, we can provide water to another 150 million people without building new facilities.

Water and climate refer to the issue of flood and drought, and other water-related disasters.

Integrated water resources management encompasses issues like river clean-up, groundwater management, and governance, which includes fecal sludge management and wastewater reuse.

As water is cross border, it is perceived as a public good. As it flows, it can be an issue of conflict.

Given the importance of citizen awareness about water usage, ADB also works with local communities to raise awareness.

A holistic approach

H.W.J (Henk) Ovink, Special Envoy for Water Affairs, Kingdom of the Netherlands

Water is one of the most serious challenges we will face, as 90 percent of disasters are water related. Water is also related to energy, food, and climate issue.

The Dutch has a long history living with water. We have lived with water for thousands of years, and have built our institutions around water.

We were already a water republic even before we were a kingdom or a democracy.

The Dutch cabinet think water is such an issue that they made me an ambassador for water to help others deal with water. Obviously no community or government can deal with the issue alone, and we have to deal with it through collaboration. That will involve institutional as well as non-institutional partners.

It has to be a long-term approach, cutting across sectors and silos. The process has to be inclusive, transparent, accountable, and improving. Delta regions are fantastic to build cities, but also are vulnerable to floods and disasters.

There has to be a holistic approach. There is no other way. Water is linked with political, social, cultural, econological agenda. It also means the single dimension of economic growth as dominant can be devastating, but there is also green or systematic growth.

If we look at the sustainable development goals we have agreed upon, those goals actually connect all aspects of life. If you take every goal on itself, I think that will be a failing approach.

Effectiveness review

Yolanda Kakabadse, president of WWF

Regarding approach to performance management (about specific ADB project), the important thing is learning from past lessons. Unfortunately the management of knowledge work is an area that is generally left behind, and deserves to be emphasized.

There is the need to define goals from multiple integration of interests. Defining policies that do not need to be written into an agreement but needs to be agreed on the platform of purposes is the right way. There is the need to consider the interest of surrounding countries, as we are all driving in the same direction.

ADB deserves commendation for its growing commitment to climate change. But environmental sustainability is a misleading concept, for it implies there is other type of sustainability, while in effect our whole sustainability has to be viewed as a whole. Only by adopting an integrated approach can we involve others. Hence the importance of ADB to become a platform for dialogues, involving all sectors.

Unless you involve all the players, you are only exploiting half the elements for success. One consensus we have reached for the last decade is that we have been convinced that there is nothing more important than the climate change issue. We like tigers only because they are beautiful, not because they are part of the life cycle, and we are part of that cycle too.

Thus for ADB to invest in forest protection should be as important as promoting our resilience to flood and drought.

It also depends on what sort of vocabulary we use to engage people. In some places, the moment you start to talk about security, whether this concerns water or air, they quickly understand. If you try to talk about climate change, no one will understand.

The most difficult part is that we do not know how to make the best of our experience. No country can survive if their neighboring countries cannot.

(Stephen P. Groff, Vice President for ADB’s East Asia, Southeast Asia and the Pacific: We human beings tend to simplify questions in a little block we can solve, and in the process, we solved one problem, but failed to solve the bigger problem. So it’s important how we can learn from the many failures in history in development, and get back to a more systematic landscape.)