Asia needs billions of dollars in environmental aid: Meeting
Asia needs billions of dollars in environmental aid: Meeting
Associated Press, Phnom Penh
Asian nations are suffering from an annual shortfall of at
least US$30 billion and need more funding - promised but not
delivered - from developed nations to turn the tide of
environmental degradation.
The issue of green financing was expected to feature Wednesday
as governments formulate an Asian agenda for next year's World
Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa.
The three-day conference in Phnom Penh opened Tuesday with a
warning that the global battle for sustainable development would
be won or lost in Asia, and that the key to victory was
alleviating mass poverty on the continent.
"Our challenge today is poverty reduction in a socially,
environmentally and economically acceptable manner," said Kim
Hak-Su, executive secretary of the U.N. Economic and Social
Commission for Asia and the Pacific, or ESCAP, in a policy paper.
A Phnom Penh Regional Platform, which will be submitted to the
2002 summit, is expected to voice concern over an annual
financing gap for the environment of about $30 billion and call
for innovative ways to tap funds.
The ESCAP chief and other delegates are also urging that
developed countries honor a commitment to reach a United Nations
target of 0.7 percent of gross national product for official
development assistance.
An Asian task force preparing for the Johannesburg summit
estimated Asia needs $70.2 billion a year in investment to
achieve environmentally sound development.
But inflows have proved inadequate, the gap resulting in part
from failure by the richer nations to honor promises made at the
1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. The Johannesburg meeting
will assess the state of the world's environment a decade after
Rio.
The continent's population of 3.2 billion, over half the
world's people, is expected to rise to 4.8 billion by 2025 and
5.3 billion by 2050, gobbling up forests, water and biodiversity.
Already, soil erosion affects 80 percent of the land, the
levels of smoke and dust in 10 Asian cities are twice the world's
average and fecal bacteria in rivers is three times the global
average. Coral reefs, great spawning grounds for marine life, are
under threat everywhere.
Impoverished families - some 900 million Asians earn less than
$1 a day - often have no choice but to overexploit forests,
grasslands and rivers.