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.