Jeju (AsiaNews/Agencies) – From today until March 31 the 8th United Nations Environment Program conference will be held in Jeju. This is first time that any such international conference has been held in Asia, as experts and environment ministers from 100 nations across the world meet to discuss critical global enviromental issues.      

The conference's main topics will be the shortage of potable water as well as the growing problem of fertile lands being transformed into deserts. Such issues are among the most critical in terms of Asia's growth and development.  In recent years, raging sandstorms have begun whipping across Chinese deserts; there are ever more oceanic and costal "dead zones" deprived of oxygen and life; and pollution in general is increasing at alarming rates.  

Asia is currently the region of the world with the least amount of drinking water available per capita. Yet the problem also has a worldwide dimension. "Already one in six of the world's people live without access to fresh water," said Klaus Toepfer, head of the UN Environment Program.

Unless action is taken, a third of the world's population is likely to suffer from chronic water shortages within a few decades:  "The quantity and quality of fresh water remain the most serious and critical issues of the 21st century," he said.

Asia is the world leader of other sad environmental problems: its cities are among the most polluted and many regions, due to industrial development, have been damaged by thousands of trees being cut down. Environmentalists warn that Asia could well pay a heavy price should it repeat the same error made by western industrial powers: to give first priorty to the process of industrialization and only then worry about how to keep the environment clean.    

The high rate of desertification in China, produced by the growth of industrial parks and rural establishments, is making the Gobi Desert's winds rage all the more - jeopardizing even the Korean peninsula, Japan and the American west coast.

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