The Asian Development Bank (ADB) will make efforts to better deal with such emerging challenges as increased inequality and environmental deterioration arising from economic success to ensure that Asia's future development benefits all, said ADB President Haruhiko Kuroda on Sunday morning at the opening event of the bank's 40th Annual Meeting of Board of Governors.

"We can not be complacent on impressive progress, because increased inequality across the region and within individual countries threatens social cohesion and puts at risk the process of growth itself," Kuroda said.

"Ours is increasingly a region of two faces. One is the shining Asia of vitality and wealth, and the other is its shadows, where desperate poverty persists," according to the president.

Kuroda said that the ADB will go on with its two fundamental principles of prosperity with inclusiveness and growth with sustainability to assist the Asia-Pacific region to achieve its shared aspiration for development.

He called on governments of Asian countries to facilitate the construction of an environment that nutures the private sector in order to create jobs for the hundreds of millions of unemployed and underemployed Asian people.

"Prosperity with inclusiveness means reaching out to the 620 million Asians who still live on less than 1 U.S. dollar a day," he underlined, saying that the goal requires sustained and broad- based growth that generates jobs and raises incomes by absorbing the surplus labor of poor.

It is necessary for the ADB to focus more intensely on enhancing the capabilities of the poor, said Kuroda, who described providing the poor with access of health, education and social safety nets as not only the right, but also the samrt job to do.

"This is the only way to give the poor people the tools they need to effectively participate in and benefit from the process of economic development," he said.

About the growth with sustainability, Kuroda urged the ADB member economies to use the region's natural resources wisely.

Over the last three decades, Asia's energy consumption has grown by 230 percent. The continent now accounts for nearly one quarter of the world's greenhouse gas emissions.

"Asia needs energy to fuel industrial growth and to support its megacities, but growth with sustainability demands cleaner technologies, new alternative energy sources and more efficient energy use," Kuroda said, adding that the ADB will continue to use its mechanism to help member economies on their efforts to mitigate the world climate change and to ease pressure on global energy supplies.

Kuroda called on governments of the region to tackle the impacts of climate change and environmental degradation in partnership, saying that "we should regard our environmental responsibilities not as a cost, but as an investment in the future. "

The Board of Governors is the Manila-based institution's highest policy-making body, which convenes each year to review the bank's past performance on administrative, financial and operational fields and to make new strategies as well as policy guidance to better contribute to the region's growth.

Source: Xinhua