The majority of the 1 billion people who lack access to safe drinking water live in Asia. The majority of the 2.6 billion people who are without access to basic sanitation live in Asia. Without improving water and sanitation situation in Asia, constraints to growth will arise from critical and worsening problems in the availability, reliability and quality of water and in environmental degradation and health risks from poor water and sanitation. In 2002, 82% of the region's population had gained access to improved water supplies, an increase of approximately 758 million people since 1990. However, despite progress made between 1990 and 2002, approximately 669 million people in the region were without access to safe drinking water, with nearly half of them in East and Northeast Asia. Likewise, as of 2002, one third of Asia and the Pacific lacked access to clean water, but one half of the region had no access to the most basic sanitation facilities. The toll in threats to growth, health and environment is encapsulated in the reality that in too many countries MDG goals for water and sanitation will not be met.

A huge proportion of the population in Asia is living in conditions that pose high risks both to their personal health to their environments. It is essential for economic and social development in Asia to take action to achieve breakthrough in access to water and sanitation. Clean water and sanitation are deeply and inextricably connected to the achievement of national development goals, and to virtually all the MDGs, in particular those involving the environment, education, gender equality and the reduction of child mortality and poverty.

At the 4th World Water Forum in Mexico City, March 2006, the Board tabled the document titled "The Compendium of Actions" also known as the Hashimoto Action Plan. It outlines a work plan to ensure the attainment of improved water and sanitation access. UNSGAB neither wrote a long report nor made recommendations across the board. It selected specific actions in six areas: i) Water Operators Partnerships ii), Financing, iii) Sanitation, iv) Monitoring and Reporting, v) Integrated Water Resources Management, and vi) Water and Disaster.

After Mexico, the Board set itself the task of promoting implementation in these areas. In several important areas of the HAP, e.g. in Finance and Sanitation, the Board strongly suggests that the focus of action move to the Regional level. A logical next step has therefore been to organize Regional Dialogue to explore joint actions on the recommendations with government representatives, major institutions and other key players. The first dialogue conducted for Africa in Tunis in December 2006 produced Tunis Joint Statement in which numbers of concrete actions were agreed including initiatives towards AU Water Summit in 2008.

The Asian Dialogue on May 31st, 2007 in Shanghai is the second of the series of regional dialogues. Asian Ministers and other key participants of the region are invited to engage themselves in purposeful suggestions of achievable results to Asian challenges to advance water and sanitation agenda.

In particular, frank dialogue is needed about how Government commitment to improvement in water and sanitation can be increased. How do we provoke an interest in making budget funds available for sanitation? The Asian Bank has committed itself to a substantial increase in lending to water - how do we increase the demand for loans in this area? Is there an interest in Asia in creating sound, healthy water operators that can borrow in order to maintain, improve and extend current water systems? Is there sufficient interest in sanitation and clean water to move these up the priority list?

Participants in the dialogue will discuss these strategic priority areas for Governments, Regional Institutions and Asian civil society and will suggest what actions by UNSGAB and by representatives of governments and key institutions in Asia could achieve breakthrough in this area - and move the world further toward the MDGs on water and sanitation. Another important goal is to provide the basis for inputs into the deliberations of the international and regional communities on water issues in Asia and promote water as an agenda item in the G-8 Summits.

The Strategic Priority Areas cover the following items:

• Focusing wide attention on Asia's Water and Sanitation Policy Challenges; primarily in Asian Governments, but also in international and UN contexts.
• Mobilizing to increase the allocation and draw down of funding already available for water and sanitation; enabling through carefully constructed programmes, improvement in water operator capacity sufficient to allow their own access to financial resources; bringing on new budgetary and new financial resources where needed for key water initiatives in Asia (trust funds, initiatives, investments);
• Finding institutional arrangements that will provide more reliable monitoring on both programmes and delivery of commitments to Asian Water and Sanitation Challenges;
• Promoting radical change in approaches to providing sanitation to the unserved using the International Year of Sanitation as catalyst for breakthrough
• Promoting international dialogue on obstacles to achieving the MDGs on water and sanitation in Asia;
• Jointly exploring the utility of developing a regional catalyst for national action plans for urban water supply and sanitation;
• Considering whether acceleration is needed in the institutional arrangements for the support of trans-boundary cooperation; and
• Looking at future actions for coping with variability of climate change

The List of Possible Joint Actions by Asian key organizations and UNSGAB will be discussed as exemplified in Appendix.

• Joint Statement by ADB and UNSGAB
  
• Report of the dialogue
  
• Opening remarks -UNSGAB Chair HRH the Prince of Orange
  
• Participants
  
• Agenda
  
  
• Follow up of the Dialogue