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Committed to Sustainable Cities and Human Settlements for All
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Annual2009
Speakers
Vice Chairperson of the 10th Standing Committees of the National People's Congress, Gu Xiulian
Chairman of the International Water Association, David Garman
Previous
Member of the Jiangsu Provincial Standing Committee of the CCP and Secretary of Wuxi Municipal Committee of the CCP, Yang Weize
Chief Engineer of State Environmental Protection Ministry, Wan Bentai
Former Minister of Environment Ministry of Canada and Chairman of UNEP Government Administration Commission, David Anderson
General Consultant to China Association for Yellow River Cultural and Economic Development, former Minister of Treasury, Xiang Huaicheng
Vice Governor of Jiangsu Provincial Government, Xu Ming
Mayor of Wuxi, Mao Xiaoping
President of Friends of the United Nations, Vice Chairman of the Global Forum on Human Settlements, Noel Brown
Secretary-General of the Global Forum on Human Settlements, Lu Haifeng
Chairman of Science Council of International Lake Environment Committee, Masahisa Nakamura
Chairman of International Ecocity Builders Association, Richard Register
Vice Chairman and Secretary-General of All-China Environment Federation, Zeng Xiaodong
Deputy Director of Policy and Regulation Department of Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, author of “Public Right Market”, Xu Zongwei
Highlighted Viewpoints
◆In the face of water crisis no one or country or region can just preserve their own purity and integrity while paying no attention to others, we must bravely confront it and take our responsibilities jointly and respectively and deal with the crisis hand-in-hand.
——Vice Chairperson of the 10th Standing Committees of the National People's Congress, Gu Xiulian
◆Perhaps the most urgent issue facing the world today is providing safe drinking water and water for sanitation. Access to clean water and adequate sanitation is crucial for poverty reduction and development.
——President of Friends of the United Nations, Vice Chairman of the Global Forum on Human Settlements, Noel Brown
◆Water is the source of life and origin of our ecological world. Since ancient times, man chose to live near water; cities were built beside water and civilizations flourished along with water. The Southern Yangtze River area of China is endowed with abundant water resources and world-widely famous for the poetically picturesque human settlements of “small bridges over flowing streams”.
——General Consultant to China Association for Yellow River Cultural and Economic Development, former Minister of Treasury, Xiang Huaicheng
◆To let rivers and lakes recuperate, we need to make substantive progress on ecological civilization building in some key regional valleys and set good examples for the whole country and offer referential experience to the world. To our delight, however, in recent years, Wuxi Municipality, Suzhou Municipality and other regional areas around the Taihu Lake conducted all-round eco-city building, by taking hold of the opportunity of building beautiful townships and ecological areas, have vigorously push forward the new countryside building, which laid a solid foundation for the ecological civilization building in the Taihu Valley.
——General Engineer of State Environmental Protection Ministry, Wan Bentai
◆We need to grope a new way for the Taihu Lake Treatment in line with its characteristics. Apart from the effective and successful experience we already had, the Taihu Lake improvement takes a road of mass prevention and mass treatment, and we need to wage a people’s war for the Taihu Lake Treatment with wide participation of the mass, not just a hasty and short term mass movement.
——Vice Chairman and Secretary-General of All-China Environment Federation, Zeng Xiaodong
◆We shall take full advantage of this fruitful event and make it an turning point, aiming to the goals of building a National Ecological Garden City, National Eco-City Groups and National Best Human Settlement City, exert vehement efforts in turning manufacturing industry to service industry, convert the production-oriented urban function to science and technology-oriented, culture-oriented, and human settlements-oriented urban function, promote the building of a famous leisure city with the best livable conditions, a famous city with beautiful mountains and waters, and strive to build Wuxi into a world first-class livable city with its own distinct characteristics.
——Member of the Jiangsu Provincial Standing Committee of the CCP and Secretary of Wuxi Municipal Committee of the CCP, Yang Weize
◆We shall make the best of the achievements made from the Forum, and perseveringly push forward the water environment treatment, enhance science and technology and experience exchange with all the countries, extend international cooperation, strive to make rivers and lakes recuperate, build new type human settlements with prosperous economy, ecological civilization, and well-off life for the people.
——Vice Governor of Jiangsu Provincial Government, Xu Ming
◆We take “Environmental Protection Priority” and Ecocity Building as the basic principle for social and economic development, strengthening overall coordination to maintain a dialectical relationship between economic development and ecological environmental protection, melting the awareness of environmental protection into the developing process, applying environmental protection approaches into the development practices, exemplifying the environmental protection effects in the development achievements, making environmental protection a common responsibility and initial choice for the government, enterprises and all the citizens, supporting environmental protection with economic development, promoting environmental protection with economic development, and safeguard the realization of the urban development goals.
——Wuxi Mayor Mao Xiaoping
◆Water sustainable development technologies, which we have already had, is not yet an only solution, we must start from scratch, providing some preferential policies, adopting the state-of-the-art science and technologies to raise water quality, and in course of time, we’ll run into many obstacles, we must have the courage to innovate. We must take leadership into consideration, leadership of the governments, leadership of the environmental protection agencies, and achieve this goal with concerted efforts.
—— Chairman of the International Water Association, David Garman
◆Much of the discussion of water is of short term problems, measured in years or decades. These are vitally important. However I believe that adapting water systems and water usage to the changes brought about by a warmer world created by climate change will be the single most important core problem facing all nations in the century ahead.
——Former Minister of Environment Ministry of Canada and Chairman of UNEP Government Administration Commission, David Anderson
◆Ever since the reform on China’s Municipal Public Utilities, private capital has entered the monopolized industry and public utilities, and there has been established an operating market involving public interest between the public sector and private sector. The essential attribute of this market is of public right and its market. We must recognize and standardize the public right market, take substantive measures to supervise businesses involving public interest, safeguard social public interest and legitimate interest of non-public economy in the market.
——Deputy Director of Policy and Regulation Department of Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, author of “Public Right Market”, Xu Zongwei.
◆Now there are so many cars and so many machines paving the planet and delivering fuel to run the physically disbursed city we have a problem in climate change that could well set the evolution of life on the planet back millions of years.
——Chairman of International Ecocity Builders Association, Richard Register
◆In today’s conference we have discussed two topics: livable city and lakeside human settlements culture, we had governmental officials like Director Zhou Lan from Jiangsu Provincial Construction Department, who talked to us about the Human Settlements of Jiangsu in the past, at present and in the future, we had Richard Register and other international experts talking on ecocity and case studies, we also had the presentation and explanation of the Best Practices of urban human settlements represented by Yangzhou. The Forum covered entensive topics and rich and colorful contents, struck a chord with us, and achieved great seccesses.
——Secretary-General of the Global Forum on Human Settlements, Lu Haifeng
◆It takes a long time to improve a lake, we must educate people, make them take an active part in lake water treatment, we need not only the support of software but we also need the support of hardware and the change of people’s minds.
——Chairman of Science Council of International Lake Environment Committee, Masahisa Nakamura