The Fourth Asia-Pacific Water Summit (4th APWS), convening for its final day, began with a special high-level session for small island developing states (SIDS) to address vulnerabilities to climate disasters and SIDS-specific water issues.
High-level statements to the summit also continued as did thematic sessions. Thematic sessions on:
- Water, Culture, and Peace addressed guiding principles that foster peace for enhanced resilience against water-related disasters.
- Sound Water Cycle discussed promoting water cycle policies in river and groundwater basins to safeguard water security.
- Water and Food discussed promoting appropriate technologies for increasing production, maintaining proper agriculture water management, and strengthening resilience and adaptive capacity to climate-related disasters.
These were followed by discussions in integrated sessions on:
- Governance, which addressed how to take the bold and transformative steps needed to accelerate the rate of progress on water governance and achieve the SDGs by 2030.
- Finance, which explored how to maximize investment from both the private and public sectors to address water security and disaster risk reduction.
- Science and Technology, which addressed initiatives to enhance the development and sharing of knowledge, data and observation, including tools and capacity-building programmes to help decision making on water security in a changing climate.
In a final integrated session, the summit amalgamated messages and outcomes of the integrated sessions to find ways forward for reform and improvement in these three areas for implementation of the Kumamoto Declaration.
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Special Session
Kausea Natano, Prime Minister, Tuvalu
Faalavaau Perina Jacqueline Sila-Tualaulelei, Ambassador of Samoa to Japan
Hiroshi Yamakawa, President, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency
Ahmed Mujthaba, Minister, Environment, Climate Change and Technology, Maldives
Jiba B. Kabua, President, Marshall Islands
Water and Food
Kyohei Matsushita, Shiga University, Japan
Mio Oka, ADB
Sanjiv de Silva, International Water Management Institute
Water, Culture and Peace
Jerome Delli Priscoli, GWP
Howard Bamsey, Chair, GWP
Azimjon Nazarov, First Deputy Minister of Water Resources, Uzbekistan
Sound Water Cycle, Including Groundwater
Hans Dencker Thulstrup, UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)
Megan McLeod, Alliance for Water Stewardship (AWS) Asia-Pacific
Science & Technology
Shamila Nair-Bedouelle, Assistant Director-General for Natural Sciences, UNESCO
Garvey McIntosh, NASA Attaché, US Embassy Tokyo
Shahbaz Khan, UNESCO
Johannes Cullmann, World Meteorological Organization
Rahm Emanuel, United States Ambassador to Japan
Governance
Dinara Ziganshina, Director, Scientific-Information Center, Interstate Commission for Water Coordination of Central Asia (ICWC)
Bibi Zarina Che Omar, Deputy Director-General, Department of Irrigation and Drainage, Malaysia
Amgad Elmahdi, Green Climate Fund
Finance
Patricia Lopez, World Bank
Xavier Leflaive, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)
Chris llagan, GWP
Integrated Sessions
Daler Juma, Minister of Energy and Water Resources, Tajikistan
Sulton Rahimzoda, Chairman, Executive Committee of the International Fund for saving the Aral Sea
Catarina de Albuquerque, CEO, Sanitation and Water for All (SWA)
Christiane Rohleder, State Secretary, Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection, Germany
Peter Thomson, UN Secretary-General's Special Envoy for the Ocean