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TABLE OF CONTENTS Volume 2, No. 9 November - December 1997 5 Resource Crisis or Lack of Will and Imagination? Editorial by Najib Saab 6 Children and Environment Raising children in a healthy and environmentally sound manner 20 Voyage in the Emirates Astonishing observations of greening the desert and reintroducing wildlife 28 Microclimate in Architecture When architecture communicates positively with the forces of nature 34 The Palm Tree A generous plant of diverse benefits 36 Pollution in the Mediterranean Endangered ecosystems in the "cradle of civilization" 40 Environment in Germany Environmental protection as an act of state, economy and citizens 44 Development and Environmental Impact Conference, and Saudi Envirotech '97 An overview 51 The Slaughterhouse A horrifying model encountered in many developing countries 52 Bintael Natural Reserve Villagers planted this Lebanese mountainous stretch with pines and transferred it into a natural reserve 55 The Role of Women in Development Women are still alienated in most development projects 58 The Ozone Shield Ultraviolet radiation intensifies with the continuous depletion of the ozone layer 62 Fabric Recycling An environmentally friendly industry 65 Environment and Sustainable Development Environmental perspective, by Dr. Mostafa Kamal Tolba Green Quotes, 11 - Arab Environmental News, 12 - World Environment News, 26 - Environment Market, 32 - Natural Medicine, 38 - Consumer Tips, 48 - Green Library, 50 -Calendar, 55 - Environment & Development Forum, 60 Exclusive: Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al-Nahayan, President of the United Arab Emirates, in an interview with Environment and Development: A new perspective of nature, environment, culture and development p 14 Supplement: The Young Environmentalist FROM THE EDITOR Crisis of International Environment and Development Programmes: Shortage of Resources or Lack of Resolve and Imagination By Najib Saab Shortage of resources has become the typical explanation given by international development programmes to justify their failure to achieve tangible results. The fact is that accepting this explanation would neither help to attract resources, nor contribute to the implementation of successful programmes. International agencies often disregard other inherent causes of failure such as lack of resolve and poor management, let alone creative imagination. The problem multiplies when those programmes get reduced to implementation tools of selective short-term plans, which remain limited to press conferences. The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, which was held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, and became known as the Earth Summit, had many offsprings, in the form of initiatives, programmes, treaties and a lot of promises to the Third World. The most confusing of those might be the array of jammed development programmes carrying big names and, for sure, noble causes. But the problem is that objectives of those programmes are spread thin and goals perplexed, in such a way which makes proper evaluation of results a near impossible mission. Sustainable Development Networking Programme (SDNP), Capacity 21, Global Environment Fund (GEF), Mediterranean Technical Assistance Programme (METAP), in addition to the European Union and other funds, all carry great potentials, but are often trapped in confusion and overlapping interests. Rather than serving as a foundation for long-term development plans, independent of political maneuvers, those programmes are becoming an integral part of the political and bureaucratic panorama. What has been planned as sustainable development strategy is more often reduced to short-term tactics, dancing to the tune of the prevailing political mood. Earth Summit has created, intentionally or not, a futile sort of competition among different United Nations agencies, and even within the same agency, to win the biggest portion of the "environmental cake". This state of anarchy has led to confusion, and programmes were driven into vicious circles. The sheer existence of a certain programme, rather than the success in reaching people and affecting positive change in the quality of life, has become the ultimate achievement. While those programmes were supposed to advocate cooperation and present themselves as a united front to enhance the performance of institutions, they opted, in many cases, to compete in order to gain the support of officials. Accepting to play this role, the programmes lost all sorts of meaningful leverage, and wasted the ability to actively affect development policies. How can complaints about shortage of resources be taken seriously, when the scarce resources available are being used in duplicated projects, with no coordination or transparent accountability system. In one country of the region, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has prepared a national environmental information trategy, upon the request and under the supervision of the Ministry of Environment. Three other organizations, whose mandates cover fields not directly related to the subject, concurrently prepared similar plans, which cost over US$ 50,000. All plans now rest in peace on shelves and in drawers. In another case, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has prepared, in cooperation with UNEP, draft environmental law and Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) manual, in an effort which lasted two years and involved dozens of experts. The process involved hundreds of people from the government and the private sector, and the results were reviewed by international experts, at a cost of over US$ 600,000. Another organization soon volunteered to repeat the same job, and present it as the first attempt of its kind. Those who originally prepared the work were not invited to the presentation, even to learn lessons from possible mistakes. Have environmental concerns been reduced to recycling, practiced as recycling of reports and blueprints, until they become boring repetition, lacking any significance and sense? This accumulation of international environmental programmes has created a unique sort of supply and demand. As a result, a new breed of "environmental experts" has evolved, who are capable of tackling all aspects and no aspect at the same time. Thus, someone who has written a term paper on soil twenty years ago, for example, could now sell it to a programme or a ministry as a reference on soil pollution, and in many cases re-sell it to other programmes under different titles. And a person who attended a conference on Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) starts to promote himself as an EIA expert. And someone, who obtained a sort of an environmental degree from a post box university opens an "environmental supermarket" to sell lectures and papers, bluntly copied from books and magazines without even mentioning the source. Those are the consequences of projects which refer to the human being, in their extensive literature, as a "stakeholder". As if they aim at stripping man of his dignity and reducing him to a number on the list of the poor, and as if man's dignity and quality of life are no more the essence and aim of development. In the middle of this confusion, it is natural to question whether environment and development slogans have become distraction issues for the third world, to divert attention from the big global decisions taken at the level of finance and economy. Did reports and conferences become an established goal, in isolation from a clear plan and accountability, with each report suggesting a further report, and each conference recommending a follow-up conference? Is it sustainability of privileges, posts, favoritism, reports and conferences that is at stake? Under these circumstances, how can information be instrumental, in the framework of the current programmes, in integrating environment and development? These programmes carry great potentials when placed on a productive track. And the biggest achievement they can realize would be to help creating reliable factual and background information and data on environment and development matters. However, an environmental database cannot be created without reliable data. Capacity building means training human resources and helping institutionalization, starting with existing structures, rather than encourage the creation of parallel and satellite administrative structures. Building a network has to attach more weight to the "work" than to the "net". Environmental information, on the other hand, is by no means advertising programmes, meetings and conferences. Those are being marketed as news for the gossip columns, while the real need is for information that promotes concepts and encourages substantive dialogue. May I suggest that the best service the media could offer environment and development programmes would be to stop publishing any news and photos of social events, meetings, conferences, workshops, signature of projects and distribution of certificates, and concentrate on substance, analysis, results and investigative reporting. This might lead to streamlining resources in a more productive manner, let alone facing realities of life. Watching all of those social events related to development, with no in-depth analysis and follow-up to monitor results, we tend to believe that all problems will be solved with a magic touch. Work based on accurate data, identification of clear goals and coordination among different programmes provides the only means to avert transforming the initiatives of Rio Conference on Environment and Development into Rio Carnaval of Environment and Development. To Discuss This Topic, Write to nsaab@mectat.com.lb