The summit was held in Beppu, Japan on December 3-4, and was attended by delegates from over 30 countries. One of its main aims was to focus the attention of world leaders, due to attend a G-8 summit in July 2008, on water supply problems caused by climate change.
"I hope the discussions at the Asia-Pacific summit will provide colossal power and wisdom for the G-8 meeting, "Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda said in his opening speech.
In the Asia-Pacific region, which has a population of some 3.7 billion people, around 700 million have no access to safe water.
The participants want to halve these figures by 2015, and solve the water and basic sanitation problem completely by 2025, the summit closing statement said.
"The newly-set goals, particularly the one of ensuring basic sanitation, will be extremely hard to achieve," the agency quoted a Japanese bank official involved in water supply research as saying.
Many political experts have warned that future wars will be fought over clean water supplies and sources as climate change takes hold.
"Impacts such as flooding, melting permafrost and desertification could lead to loss of agricultural land, poisoning of water supplies and destruction of economic infrastructure," then- British defense secretary John Reid told the London-based Royal Institute of International Affairs last year.
"Such changes make the emergence of violent conflict more rather than less likely," he added.
The UN summit on climate change opened on November 4 on the Indonesian island of Bali. During the next two weeks, officials will attempt to find a replacement for the carbon emission-limiting Kyoto Protocol, due to expire in 2012.
