Question 2 (Hon. Senator Kamilia lbrahim, MALAYSIA):

I must congratulate the speaker for a very educational and enlightening paper. And he has definitely managed to convey to us a very serious message: there is threat to the survival to human beings and the world at large due to the global warming and the mismanage-ment and misuse of water. The speaker mentioned just now that there is a need fdr water balance in Asia. May I ask the speaker to e laborate as to how we countries in Asia could work together in a constructive e ffort to come up perhaps with a plan of action so that we could save the world effectively. Thank you.

Dr. Uchijima:

Thank you very much, I think the question raised is quite difficult to give you the quick answer. The largest problem, as I mentioned in the end of my present ation, is as follows. Water is a resources not only for humankind, but also for the other living things. At the same time, the water is the most important fac tor affecting the global environment and atmosphere. And at the same time, the water is the habitat for the aquatic living things. So water has multi-faceted roles and functions. Therefore, how to ensure the sustainable symbiosis of wate r and the relevant factors should be considered. As has been already thought by so many people, we seem to think water is only for the humankind. But the more important issue is that how the resources, environment and the habitat on acco unt of the water will be balanced. In other words, water is utilized as a habit at, as well as a resources, as well as the factor influencing the environment. Four hundred liters of wa-ter is consumed per day per person in developed natio ns. On the other side of the coin, in the arid and semi-arid regions of the wor ld, we can consume only one or two liters of very low-quality water. One thing we can ask is how can we conserve the water re-sources? Secondly, how to recycl e the water without polluting the water along the line? We should have some tec hnological improvement to fmd out a way to recycle the water by eliminating pol lutants of the water. As I mentioned, water is serving as a resources, so we do have the underlying assumption that all humankind can consume water and dis-ch arge it into the stream. The question raised is, what we can do in Asia in coop eration among the Asian countries. In Asia, nowadays, especially in the Southea st Asian coun-tries, water is subject to the seasonal change of the dry season and rainy season through-out the year. So how to standardize or normalize the w ater availability throughout the year without constructing huge dams. They caus e serious environmental destruction. Thus we have to construct small farm ponds with optimum technology and networking. We have to think about the optimum tec hnology to be introduced to smooth the water availability throughout the year, whether the season is dry or rainy. This may be the issue that we can address i n the region as well as in the area as a whole. Thank you.

　

　

　

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