Resident Coordinator’s Remarks at the Asian Development Bank Roundtable on River Basin Pollution

Anouj Mehta, Country Director, Asian Development Bank

Distinguished experts,

and colleagues.

I am honored to welcome you to this roundtable on two of the gravest challenges facing us: water pollution and biodiversity loss.

Let me thank Asian Development Bank (ADB) for bringing the government, the private sector, development partners and the UN system together to advance this agenda.

My apologies for not being able to join you in person, but let me take this opportunity to share the UN’s perspective and lessons that we are drawing from Thailand and the Mekong sub-region.

Water pollution and biodiversity loss are interlinked and key to advancing climate-related SDGs.

In Thailand, these goals need acceleration, requiring step up in technology, financing, and policies.

One primary concern is plastic pollution. The country’s annual per-capita plastic consumption of 15.5 kg per person is one of Asia’s highest rates with only a quarter being recycled. This means that 320,000 tons of plastic end up in rivers and oceans each year, harming ecosystems.

Municipal waste is another source of pollution with much of it ending up in oversaturated landfills.

Thailand is also one of the biggest producers of plastic resins and products, which means that the private sector will need to play a larger role in addressing challenges at scale.

The Prime Minister has set the ambition on climate and the government’s commitment to transform agriculture into a low-carbon, climate-resilient and resource-efficient ecosystem.

This will create the incentive for coordinated actions toward preserving water sources and ensuring that agricultural runoffs do not pollute.

The UN is bringing to bear innovative technologies for durable solutions that can be replicated across the region.

UNEP is tracking plastic leakage and waste accumulation at 258 hotspot locations along the Mekong River in Thailand with the help of digital technology and young citizen scientists.

These assessments inform policies on sustainable waste management and identify infrastructure gaps at national and sub-national levels to collect and recycle plastics.

FAO, ESCAP and UNOSAT are leveraging high-resolution satellite imagery for real-time analysis to assess food loss and waste in agricultural land.

They are also tracking illegal logging and trafficking in the biodiverse buffer zones of forests. By building capacities nationwide, we can scale up this technology for use in other areas.

IAEA is testing how to turn plastic waste into construction materials with nuclear technology in what could be the next breakthrough for tackling plastic pollution.

We have seen that once the best available green technologies are introduced in pilots, the private sector is quick to adopt and upscale them of its own accord. This provides an opportunity to multiply impacts at scale.

Equally important is to scale up green financing.

Analysis shows that an additional investment of at least $410 billion is required to achieve the SDGs on schedule in Thailand and that is before we factor in the pandemic’s impacts.

Bridging this funding gap will require additional public and private resources through innovative financing solutions.  

The Prime Minister recently committed to an investment of $2 billion through SDG-linked sustainability bonds, which will unlock additional green financing from domestic markets. Bankers, investors, and asset managers will be critical for this agenda as they scale up ESG.

ADB can serve as an inspiration with its support to governments in developing bankable projects across the region to bring to bear blended financing for dealing with waste in water pollution.

Transformative change also requires a whole-of-society approach.

The UN’s partnership with the 77 governors in Thailand is translating into waste segregation for 14 million rural households across all provinces, which is generating 550,000 tons of carbon reductions and its equivalent in carbon credits.

The first tranche of the carbon credits was bought by a national bank recently.

FAO, in partnership with the government, is supporting sustainable forest management benefiting 65,000 smallholders in biodiverse buffer zones and generating a million tons of carbon credits.

These initiatives are in support of the government’s ambition to reach net zero by mid-century and increase forest cover to 55%.

Going forward, we need collective action to step up engagement with all stakeholders.  

Our commitments will be paying dividends for generations in a greener world where societies and nature can thrive in harmony.  

Thank you.