The Asian Network for the Rights of Occupational and Environmental Victims (ANROEV) expresses its strong support for the series of campaigns and press conferences organized by the Asian Citizens’ Center for Environmental Health (Eco-Health) in the lead-up to the 2025 APEC Summit in Gyeongju, South Korea. Through its initiative themed “APEC = Asia-Pacific Environmental Community: Building a Sustainable Tomorrow,” Eco-Health asserts the vital role of civil society in reshaping APEC from a profit-centered economic forum into a genuine platform for environmental justice, health protection, and human rights across the region.

The activities, spanning from Seoul to Gyeongju, boldly highlight urgent regional concerns — from halting Japan’s Fukushima nuclear wastewater dumping to banning asbestos, strengthening corporate accountability, ensuring chemical safety, and establishing nuclear safety monitoring. These are not isolated issues; they represent intertwined struggles that define the collective future of the Asia-Pacific community.

As the world’s most dynamic economic region, the Asia-Pacific faces complex and transboundary challenges that transcend borders, industries, and governments. The persistent use of asbestos, the continuing threat of nuclear contamination, and recurring corporate negligence demonstrate the human cost of unchecked industrial and trade expansion.

Eco-Health’s campaign calls on APEC leaders to move beyond rhetorical commitments to sustainability and to institutionalize mechanisms for environmental democracy, where communities, workers, and victims of environmental harm are heard and protected. The participation of groups such as the Asian Asbestos Abolition Network (ABAN), BANKO, AMRC, and victims’ organizations underscores a growing regional consensus: that true progress cannot exist where people’s health and the environment are sacrificed for economic gain.

The 2025 APEC Summit offers a historic opportunity to redefine what cooperation in the Asia-Pacific means. ANROEV stands with Eco-Health and other allied movements in asserting that economic growth without safety, justice, and sustainability is hollow. The region must no longer tolerate double standards that allow transnational corporations to exploit weaker environmental and labor laws. Instead, APEC must evolve into a community that safeguards life, prioritizes environmental health, and holds corporations and governments accountable for their actions.

In supporting Eco-Health’s campaign, ANROEV reiterates that the path toward a just and sustainable Asia-Pacific begins with people-centered cooperation — one that places the protection of health, the environment, and human dignity at the core of regional development.