From August 8 to 11, The Asian Development Bank (ADB) organised its annual Asia Water Forum #AWF2022 with the theme “Toward a Resilient and Water-Secure Asia and the Pacific”. The GDA programme was presented on August 11 to highlight the ongoing partnership between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) on (but not limited to) water issues.
As fast-growing region, Asia and the Pacific still has 500 million people without access to basic water supplies and 1.14 billion with limited access to basic sanitation. Growing water demand exacerbated by climate change related disasters makes water security a major challenge in the region. As Woochong Um, Managing Director General and Officer-in-Charge at the Asian Development Bank stated, “Water security challenges cannot be solved following a ‘business as usual’ approach”.
In this context, satellite Earth Observation has been acknowledged among the most promising technologies to mainstreaming and scaling water resilience operations, as highlighted by Christoph Aubrecht, GDA programme coordinator during his intervention at the AWF closing plenary:
“Earth Observation can guide water professionals in data-informed, efficient, and rapid decision-making, in achieving regulatory compliance at low cost, in better targeting of investments, and in improving the performance of day-to-day operations.”
ESA is teaming up with the Asia and Pacific Water Resilience Hub in order to provide EO information services and tools as well as tailored trainings for development professionals. These joint efforts build on past collaboration experiences such as analysis of surface water resources in West Bengal, India. A dedicated GDA AID activity on Water Resources is expected to start end of 2022 in order to accelerate these ongoing efforts.
