Environmental Commitment!

A group of French women held a press conference at UNESCO headquarters in Paris, to issue a call that contained their commitment to protecting the environment after the Copenhagen Summit.

Among the women present were former and current ministers, such as the official responsible for the environment in the French presidency, Chantal Jouanno, Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, former minister Claudie Haignere, and the wife of the former prime minister, Isabel Juppe, and the Terra Femina group founder, Veronique Morali.

These women are committed to protecting the environment and everything connected to educational and social affairs that serve this cause.

This commitment is not merely a declaration with regard to an issue that some have turned into a type of “fashion.” In fact, they are working to develop and expand the scope of this issue in the countries of the south, beginning with the Mediterranean, although they have up to now focused their work on France and Europe, and are active in the field. However, they are looking at environmental problems in the Mediterranean and want to work with serious women’s groups in the region.

The situation of Mediterranean countries indicates that environmental protection is a topic that does not receive the attention that it deserves. All of the Mediterranean states are experiencing unprecedented environmental deterioration in terms of land, sea, and coastal pollution as well as unplanned growth. From east to west, from Cairo to Beirut and Damascus, Algiers and Tripoli, there is an urgent need to form groups that work on raising environmental awareness.

This campaign should begin with educational programs at the elementary and secondary levels in government and private schools.

The coasts of Lebanon, Syria, Algeria, Libya and Tunisia are among the most beautiful in the world, but they are full of trash, like the Mediterranean Sea. The treasure that this body of water represents for those living on the states on its shores has become extremely polluted, due to the lack of attention by these peoples, and their continuing to toss their waste in it.

We often see people on the Corniche al-Manara in Beirut discarding empty water bottles and other things into the sea, instead of putting them in trash receptacles. For their part, the country’s municipalities deposit their waste in the sea, because they lack the factories for processing it.

The environment is a fundamental concern in people’s lives but unfortunately, it does not receive the attention that should be devoted to it.

Poverty, population growth and social deterioration in rich and poor countries on the Mediterranean have prevented the issue of the environment from becoming a priority by governments, which believe that other problems should be solved before the environment.

However, anyone who thinks that environmental protection and raising the awareness of the public in cities and villages with regard to this issue is merely a rich person’s fad is mistaken. Protecting the environment in our countries means protecting lives and people from the deterioration of their health and standard of living.

What a terrible piece of news to hear about a cow floating on the sea in Lebanon, or an oil tanker polluting the shores of a Mediterranean with a fuel spill.

French president Nicolas Sarkozy put forward a valuable plan when he launched the Union for the Mediterranean, namely cleaning the shore of the sea from the waste spread there at its depths, and along the coasts. However, more than a year has passed since it was announced – when is the actual launch? It has remained a politician’s promise and the Mediterranean continues to suffer from horrid pollution, especially in the countries that Sarkozy wanted to include in the project.

This necessary project should begin in all countries that have a Mediterranean coastline, before becoming a joint effort. The Union for the Mediterranean is doomed to fail, and will not arise without a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The peoples of the Mediterranean are unable to unite in the area of football, after we saw and heard the curses exchanged between Egypt and Algeria in the recent World Cup qualifying matches.

Thus, how can these states unite in the framework of a Union for the Mediterranean?

What is needed is strong and wide-ranging awareness efforts by groups such as the women who launched their call from Paris “to Copenhagen and beyond!” A number of groups should be formed, and work seriously in this field, before it is too late.