The First East Asia Summit (EAS) Environment Ministers' Meeting closed in Hanoi on Thursday evening, with senior environmental officials from 16 EAS nations calling on building "environmentally sustainable cities" in the region.

The EAS involves ASEAN member countries, namely, Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, as well as six other countries, namely, China, Japan, the Republic of Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand.

According to a ministerial statement issued at the meeting, building the environmentally sustainable cities should be a priority area in the initial step of EAS environmental cooperation.

To build environmentally sustainable cities, countries should increase exchanges of experiences, expertise and technology in areas such as urban planning, green building, urban water supply and sewage treatment, urban biodiversity conservation and adaptation to climate change in cities, according to the statement.

Ministers attending the meeting said that the ASEAN framework should take a leading role in the EAS collaboration and it was also important to invite contribution from countries outside the EAS.

The meeting is the first of its kind among environment ministers of EAS nations. Last year at the third East Asia Summit held in Singapore, leaders of EAS nations signed The Singapore Declaration on Climate Change, Energy and the Environment, and decided to hold the First EAS Environment Ministers' Meeting.

(Xinhua News Agency October 10, 2008)