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ROK-ASEAN Cooperation on Water and Disasters
제8차 물과 재해 고위급 패널회의 발제문2016.11.1(화), 주아세안대표부
Thank you, Chair.
Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen, Good afternoon!
It is a great honour to join you all for today’s meeting. I start by extending my appreciation to His Excellency Dr. Han Sungsoo for your leadership as Special Envoy of the UN Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction and Water.
Today, I would like to share Korea’s cooperation with ASEAN on water and disaster management.
Last year, “Declaration on <Transforming our World: UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development>” (was adopted). The declaration pointed out that water is a cross-cutting element that encompasses climate change, population, urbanisation, food, energy. The declaration guides all of us to explore a more holistic and multi-dimensional solutions on water-related issues.
The water-related challenges become pressing issues in our time. If you look at ASEAN, the region is prone to the water-related disasters as 80% of the region is surrounded by
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water. Specifically, we have seen how vulnerable ASEAN is from tropical cyclones impacting the Philippines, Myanmar, Thailand as well as Indonesia. For this reason, ASEAN continues to seek collaborative actions in order to build the region to be more resilient from the disasters.
In order to share our knowledge for tackling the water-related disasters with ASEAN, Korea, as one of the strategic dialogue partners, has been actively engaged with the region on water and disaster issues at the regional, sub-regional and bilateral levels.
First, as a regional approach, Korea launched the ASEAN-ROK Cooperation Fund in 1990. The fund is for implementing cooperation projects in 9 priority sectors including environment, disaster management and climate change. For example,“Building Resilience for Sustainable ASEAN From Water Related Disasters”has been implemented by this fund which will be explained to you all by next speaker, Professor 진장철.
(Pause)
As a proverb says ‘prevention is better than the cure’, we also focus on ‘environment protection’ for prevention measure from disasters. The first ASEAN-ROK Summit in 1997 identified the environment as the priority area for ASEAN-ROK cooperation. In line with this, we have implemented ASEAN-KOREA Environmental Cooperation Project, namely AKECOP project entitled with Restoration of Degraded Forest Ecosystems in Southeast Asian Tropical Regions with the emphasis on the HRD, regional and on the site research. As AKECOP has concentrated on the forest over 16 years since
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2000, the region could gain a strong capacity building for mitigating the disaster impacts from water-related disasters such as cyclone. So far, it has become one of the best practices among ASEN-Dialogue Partners cooperaton projects.
On disaster monitoring as part of early warning measures for ASEAN, APEC Climate Centre in Korea has implemented Science-Based Disaster Management Platform Project. This project was suggested by President Park, Geun-hye during the Korea-ASEAN Commemorative Summit in 2014. APEC Climate Center proposed the project in cooperation with AHA Centre in Jakarta, in order to mobilise the science in policy development for disaster risk management and risk prevention in ASEAN.
(For better utilisation of the ASEAN-ROK Cooperation Fund, we are discussing with ASEAN to establish the programme-based approach. Since water is crucial, we will consider water as one of the sub elements under environment sector by discussion with ASEAN.)
Second, along with this regional approach on sub-regional dimension, Korea endeavours to biodiversity conservation and improvement of livelihood for the people in the Mekong Region as well.
As one of the six priority areas under the Korea-Mekong Cooperation Fund, Korea has shared the knowledge on water resource development with the Mekong region. Also, “The Project for Reclamation, Rehabilitation, and Restoration of Degraded Forest Ecosystems in Mekong Basin countries” was implemented as part of AFoCO (ASEAN-ROK Forest Cooperation) in 2015.
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Last but not least, as a bilateral approach, Korea has carried out the Technology Transfer for Disaster Prevention and Safety Programs to Vietnam and Laos in order to enhance disaster preparedness. On April this year, Korea supported the Vietnamese government with 300,000 dollars for their efforts of tackling severe drought and salinisation in the Central and Mekong Delta regions.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Today, I highlighted only some of the examples of Korea’s cooperation with ASEAN on water and disaster issues. Korea is committed to help ASEAN transform into more resilient from disasters.
Korea stands ready to support and promote the important works of HELP in addressing the challenges of water and disasters in ASEAN.
Thank you very much.
/The End/
