4. Replicating the Initiatives
The experience for the water environment management in Japan are applicable to other countries, so that Japanese government has taken the effort to disseminate the experiences through various programmes e.g. joint research, exchange of specialists, acceptance of trainees, loan and grant assistance.
(1) The Portfolio of Water Actions (PWA) was announced at the Ministerial Conference on 3rd World Water Forum and Japan has been encouraging to make use of the PWA website network with international organizations. Japan intends to introduce its 91 concrete actions to other countries through the network.
As one of the PWA, the Ministry of the Environment of Japan proposed “Water Environment Partnership in Asia (WEPA)” at the Third World Water Forum as a new initiative in developing a platform for strengthening water governance and capacity building to solve water environmental problems in the region. The main activities of WEPA are development of databases that will serve as a common information platform on water environment. The databases will be made public through Internet among the relevant stakeholders including government officials and NGOs as a common asset.
(2) Network of Asian River Basin Organizations (NARBO) was established February 2004 to share respective counties’ experiences and information among governments, river basin organizations and related organizations.
“The International Network for Water and Ecosystem in Paddy Fields (INWEPF)” was established in November 2004. The network provides an open platform for promoting dialogue, strengthening capacity building, developing good practices and formulating ideas for innovative policy on sustainable water use, environmental conservation and better governance in rice-based systems.
“Water and Forest International Network” was established in August 2004 to share awareness and to develop research on water and forest through exchange of opinion and information.