I commend the Malaysian Institute of Planners, the Malaysian Architects Association and the Real Estate and Housing Developers' Association of Malaysia for organising the recent conference on World Class Sustainable Cities and on the next day, a roundtable discussion to enable stakeholders to make recommendations to Kuala Lumpur City Hall for a sustainable city.

Clearly, there is a great need for initiatives that promote and practice sustainability given ongoing threats like global warming, loss of biodiversity and excessive water withdrawal.

The three organisers representing town planners, architects and developers along with the authorities have a key role to play in facilitating town and country plans as well as home and building designs that allow for sustainable use of resources.

This can be illustrated by taking the example of how our consumption of water is affected by the decisions our professional and business communities make.

Water consumption can be greatly reduced if homes and buildings are fitted with water efficient toilets and plumbing fixtures. Regrettably our homes and buildings continue to be fitted with plumbing fixtures that require high water use.

If a home is fitted with moderately water-efficient dual flush toilets that use six litres for a full flush and three litres for a half-flush in place of single flush nine-litre toilets, this initiative alone will reduce a person's domestic water consumption from 230 LPD (litres per person per day) to 191 LPD. (Currently, average domestic consumption in Selangor and the Federal Territory is about 230 LPD.)

In many countries, the use of water efficient plumbing fixtures have been made mandatory. For example, in the US, this has been the case since 1994.

Instead of pursuing sustainable water use, the Malaysian solution has been to build larger and larger water infrastructure. The Sungai Selangor Phase There project alone cost RM2.146 billion.

The proposed Pahang-Selangor Raw Water Transfer project, meanwhile, is expected to cost about RM9 billion.

The massive environmental and economic costs of this and many future water supply projects can be avoided if our authorities, developers, planners, architects and engineers implement water efficient plumbing fixtures and other water demand management measures in our homes and buildings.