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Asia: Groups Alarmed Over Weakened ADB Safeguards, Demand Greater Accountability

The Asian Development Bank will soon release a “consultation draft” on revising its policies that are supposed to protect the environment, the rights of Indigenous Peoples, and those who are resettled against their will as a result of Bank Projects. “This Safeguard Policy Update (SPU) could offer the ADB a critical opportunity to enhance its environment, resettlement and Indigenous Peoples policies in accordance with good international standards, to incorporate lessons from past failures and to put in place and fund dramatically improved safeguard systems for protecting the very people the ADB claims to help through its projects,” said Michael Simon Program Manager of Oxfam Australia.

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Asia: Stronger Regional Cooperation Can Promote Inclusive Growth, Says ADB President

STRONGER REGIONAL cooperation and integration in Asia and the Pacific can help to spread the benefits of development and promote inclusive growth in the region, ADB President Haruhiko Kuroda told a seminar at the 40th Annual Meeting yesterday.

In his opening remarks at the seminar, ?Emerging Asian Regionalism: Ten Years After the Crisis,? Mr. Kuroda said regionalism can help achieve the long-term vision of a poverty-free Asia, which is still home to two thirds of the world?s poor.
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Asia: ADB Must Evolve with a Changing Region

KYOTO, JAPAN – With Asia set to undergo dynamic changes within a generation, ADB must evolve with the region, a seminar audience heard today at ADB’s 40th Annual Meeting in Kyoto.

The Governors’ Seminar on ?Facing Asia’s Future? discussed the recent report of an Eminent Persons Group (EPG) convened by ADB President Haruhiko Kuroda to advise on future trends and challenges facing the region and ADB’s long-term role in addressing them.
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In Kyoto, Activists Challenge ADB

KYOTO: The People?s Forum on Asian Development Bank, a coalition of Japanese civil society organisations and groups from across Asia, was inaugurated with a public symposium at the Doshisha University here today. Over 300 representatives from the student community, worker?s and women?s groups, and NGOs participated in the event that put the spotlight on the adverse impacts of the ADB in Asia. The Forum is the people?s counter to the ongoing 40th Annual Governors Meeting of the ADB being held at Kyoto International Convention Center (KICC).

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Clean Energy Agenda Must Look Beyond 2012, Seminar Told

THE CLEAN energy agenda must move beyond the close of the Kyoto Protocol in 2012 to manage the threat of climate change, a seminar audience heard today in Kyoto.

?Given Asia’s phenomenal growth, its energy and development agenda has become a matter of global attention,? ADB Vice-President Ursula Schaefer-Preuss said at a seminar on ?Clean Energy and Environment: Building on Kyoto? at ADB’s 40th Annual Meeting.

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