US-AEP Urban Program - MAPES

Asian City Officials Commit to Environmental Change at MAPES Seminar

A select group of mayors, municipal commissioners and utility managers from China, India, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, and Cambodia met in Honolulu in April 2002 for the first Asia-Pacific Urban Institute (APUI) Executive Seminar. US-AEP took a leading role in organizing the Seminar with the City and County of Honolulu and the USAID Water Team. Associated with the highly successful bi-annual Mayors’ Asia-Pacific Environmental Summit (MAPES), APUI aims to provide a full spectrum of support to senior local government political and city management leaders around pressing environmental issues.

Because participant’s at MAPES 2001 cited water resource management as one such issue, the seminar focused on Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM), a planning and implementation process which brings together stakeholders in order to meet society’s long-term needs for water resources while maintaining ecological services and economic benefits.

The Seminar was organized into two programs – one targeting senior water utility managers and the other city leaders. The water utility managers’ program focused on the principal components of IWRM. The city leaders focused on examining specific water and sanitation issues in the context of finance, public-private partnerships, infrastructure and service design, technology, operations management, community participation, and political will power. Throughout the week, decision-makers and practitioners worked together to discuss local water resources issues and formulate plans of action for when they returned to their cities. At the end of the conference, over 25 representatives pledged commitments to address environmental issues in their cities.

For example Mayor Prakaikeo Rattananaka of Uttaradit, Thailand, committed to upgrade water deliver infrastructure and implement flood control techniques in an effort to impove water quality and stormwater management. In her commitment statement, she stated,

“To address water resource and environmental sanitation concerns with long-term strategic approaches is to enhance environmental quality, improve economic efficiency, and contribute to better social conditions, collectively enhancing quality of life for all Uttaradit residents for generations to come.”

In order to support city leaders in achieving their commitments, US-AEP will support the development of a capacity building program that will be closely associated with MAPES and APUI. This program will work with Asian local leaders to translate their commitments into action with tangible and measurable results, while supporting the central APUI concept that political leadership is a necessary component for livable and sustainable cities.

As Gordon Weynand, Acting Executive Director of US-AEP, stated in his keynote speech, “The partners associated with the Institute, including US-AEP, understand that leadership cannot really be taught, but instead should be encouraged, cultivated, and, perhaps most important, rewarded.”