The FAO-ESCAP pilot project on national water visions. From vision ...

• Malaysia: 23-24 May 2000 in Kuala Lumpur – attended by 21 participants including
representatives of various agencies of not only the federal government but also selected state
governments working on water resources <strong>project</strong>s, academics, NGO representatives and members of
the private sector.
• Thailand: 19-20 June 2000 in Bangkok – attended by 37 participants from key water-related
agencies, selected provincial officials, and representatives from NGOs and the private sector.
In all these roundtable workshops, <strong>FAO</strong> and <strong>ESCAP</strong> officers presented their findings on the world
water vision process and took part in detailed discussions.
c. Preparation and submission of the final country reports
After the completion of the roundtable workshops, the case study reports were revised to incorporate
the findings and recommendations of the roundtable discussions and were submitted for review and
comments to the <strong>ESCAP</strong> and <strong>FAO</strong> officials concerned. <strong>The</strong> final reports are available upon request. In
the subsequent chapters, the main findings and recommendations of these reports are summarized and
examined in the context of a regional cooperation programme taking into account the latest
developments. <strong>The</strong> relevant <strong>project</strong> reports are listed in the reference section of this synthesis.
III. IMPORTANT FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
As this synthesis report is prepared to provide complementary aspects to the four country studies, it
endeavours to present a comparative picture of the countries, important findings in the
implementation of the initial phase, experiences derived from the national processes of formulation
and implementation of national water visions, and various recommendations.
1. A comparative analysis of achievements in the selected countries before the
studies
<strong>The</strong> four <strong>pilot</strong> countries covered in the initial phase of regional cooperation between <strong>ESCAP</strong> and <strong>FAO</strong>
over the study of water resources management provide a good perspective on the socio-economic
development of developing countries in the region as well as on water resources management. As can
be seen from Table 1, these countries recorded relatively high economic growth rates over the past
two decades (with GNP growth of between 3 and 8 percent per year) and experienced an important
transformation in their economic structure, moving away from a mainly agriculture-based economy
towards an increasingly industry-based (Malaysia and Thailand) or service-based (the Philippines)
economy, with the exception of Viet Nam, which is still predominantly agricultural. As agriculture
accounts for most of the use of water resources, the economic transformation provides an interesting
perspective on the development of and achievements in water resources. This is true not only for the
role of water resources management in economic transformation, but also for the implications of the
recent financial crisis, which started in 1997. From Table 1, it can be seen that the financial crisis has
increased the relative importance of the agricultural sector in the Philippines and in Viet Nam, and
severely affected economic conditions in Thailand and Malaysia (with a reduction in GDP of 10.2 and
7.4 percent in 1998 respectively – World Bank, 2000).
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