First Arab congress on environment opens in Rabat

The first Arab congress on environment opened proceedings here Thursday with the participation of several Arab ministers.

The three-day congress on "environment management in the Arab world: challenges and future perspectives" is debating environment management and sustained development, processing of solid and industrial waste, and means to cope with industrial pollution.

Participants in the opening session, including Moroccan minister in charge of territory development, urbanism, housing and environment, Mohamed El Yazghi, and Kuwaiti minister of state for administrative development affairs, Btehane Eddwihi, called for elaborating an Arab prospective program of action on environment management and for laying the foundations of a development taking into account the ecological dimension.

They stressed the need to associate the private sector in environment protection programs and called all the components of the Arab society to grant interest to the environment management issue, to adopt new methods in the field and to back environment-related research. Arab countries were also called to earmark part of their budgets to environment protection and to participate in all conferences dealing with environment.

The congress, the first of the kind, is held at the initiative of the Arab Organization for Administrative Development.