Muscat: Environmentalists have raised the need to minimise water shortages, desertification and pollution in the region, which also faces the problem of lack of drinking water.
The Arab Human Development Report published by the United Nations gives a detailed assessment of the most significant environmental aspects that pose serious challenges and threats to future development and human security in Arab countries, said Dr. Salim Mubarak Al Hatrushi, chairman of the committee of the symposium on environmental problems in the Arab world, which was held in Oman.
"The report emphasises the need to minimise particularly the threats of water shortages, desertification, pollution, and climate change as key priority and called for the need for more conservation and sustainable use of natural resources," Dr. Al hatrushi said.
"The analysis of these environmental challenges and search for their underlying causes and the mechanisms and dynamism inherent in them cannot be carried out without research that guides policy and decision makers," he added.
The symposium provides a forum for Department of Geography in the College of Arts & Social Sciences, and the Centre for Environmental Studies & Research (CESAR), at the Sultan Qaboos University (SQU).
The symposium deals with several issues related to the actual environmental situation in the Arab World as well as the economic, social and environmental changes it is witnessing, in an attempt to monitor various aspects of deterioration caused to the ecosystems and to identify the local and foreign elements which contribute to this deterioration at the human and natural levels. The event is supported by the Research Council Oman (TRC) and the Association of Arab Universities.
Dr. Al Hatrushi said that the symposium is the best forum to draw appropriate comparisons about the prevalent challenges and to explore the initiatives taken by Arab countries to address them. "It also encompasses an attempt to examine the interaction of local communities -urban, rural and nomadic-with these initiatives."
Prof. Mustafa Idris Al Bashir, Assistant Secretary General of the Association of Arab Universities gave a talk on behalf of the Association. He said that the Arab World is facing a lot of environmental problems like elsewhere in the world.
Lack of drinking water, air and sea pollution, global warming, and irregular population distribution, etc. are some of them. He called for urgent remedial measures to address these problems and hoped that the symposium would come up with solutions to a wide range of problems that the region is facing.
In the opening ceremony, Prof. Ruud Schotting, who holds the Sultan Qaboos Chair for Water Management in Utrecht University, delivered a presentation on "How natural processes can assist in solving environmental problems". He explained how algae and bacteria could be utilised to clean up oil spills in seawater and oil field produce-contaminated water.
