The Establishment of an Asian Regional Working Group

摘要

The International Commission on Irrigation and Drainage (ICID) has three regional conferences, namely, Afro-Asian Regional Conference, European Regional Conference, and Pan American Regional Conference. The first Afro-Asian Regional Conference was held in Tashkent in the Soviet Union in 1976. Subsequent meetings were convened every two or three years, with the Seventh Conference held in Japan in 1989. Compared to the other regions, however, the Afro-Asian region covers a vast area on the continents of Africa and Asia, and Oceania, has numerous participating nations, and possesses a diversity of natural and agricultural conditions. Thus, for quite some time it has been suggested that Asia and Africa ought to convene separate regional conference. At the meeting of the International Executive Council (IEC) held in Rome in 1995 such a plan was given definite shape, and it was decided that the plan would be reviewed by the republic of Korea, Malaysia, and Japan before the next meeting of the IEC. Thereupon, Malaysia distributed questionnaires regarding the establishment of the Asian Regional Working Group to 22 Asian countries and received responses from 12 countries. Based on the results of this survey, a small group meeting to prepare for the establishment of the Conference was held in Malacca on September 9, 1996.