Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), as a single entity, would rank as the seventh-largest economy in the world. The region comprises some of the largest and the fastest-growing cities of the world. The booming cities of Southeast Asia account for more than 65 per cent of the region’s GDP today, and more than 90 million people are expected to move to urban areas by 2030. Creating cities with a high quality of life will demand some $7 trillion in investment in infrastructure, housing, and commercial space.
The whole developing process increases the demand for resources, consumptions and eventually locate pressures to resource security as well as disposal of waste. Nature’s capacity to regenerate resources that human needs is currently overwhelmed by the continuously increasing demand. Technology application and approaches to treat wastewater and solid waste are crucial to support nature’s regeneration process. Taking urban area as a starting point in dealing with water security and climate change offers enormous potential for its concentration of population.
Local and national governments increase investment in sanitation infrastructure development, while development banks offer the opportunity to scale up investment and access to sanitation infrastructures supporting the governments’ initiation. Manufacturers of water and wastewater treatment technology play important roles in securing water and dealing with climate change as well as ensuring that the investments in the sanitation sector yield the expected impact. Standards for water and sanitation products are a necessity to push mutual market access as well as the realization of technical interoperability and compatibility of products, enhancing trade in goods and services. Application of standards ensures that only tested and quality technology products are offered in the market.
Asian Institute of Technology Thailand in collaboration with Bremen Overseas Research and Development Association organise this session to present the sanitation sector’s contribution to water security and climate change within an urban context. The session focuses on the contribution of standardization on decentralized wastewater treatment technology to achieve SDG 6 on ‘Clean Water and Sanitation’ and 11 on ‘Sustainable Cities’. The session brings forward the idea of a common standard or a mutual recognition of testing prefabricated residential wastewater treatment products to the ASEAN community and highlights urban decision-makers’ specific and direct intervention to safeguard urban waters.
