Friends of the Earth Middle East (FoEME) is a longtime advocate of sustainability and environmental peacebuilding in the region. Fresh off the pages of Time Magazine, where FoEME’s directors were recently named Heroes of the Environment 2008, FoEME is hosting a conference next week as part of the Pro-Aquifer project.
Over the past two years, the Pro-Aquifer team has worked with pilot municipalities in both Israel and the Palestinian Authorities to assess threats to the shared Mountain Aquifer and develop policy guidelines for pollution prevention. From these initial case studies in Umm el Fahem on the Israeli side (seen above) and Tulkarm on the Palestinian side, FoEME developed general policy guidelines for all communities in the Mountain Aquifer recharge area.
These guidelines will be presented at the conference, which is a “kick-off” to a three-day course discussing the issues and policy recommendations that emerged from the Pro-Aquifer Project. The course will include presentations from representatives of both the Israeli and Palestinian Water Authorities, as well as members of non-governmental organizations and academic institutions.
Pro-Aquifer Professional Conference and Course 4 – Use of Policy Guidelines: Developing Municipal Policy to Protect Ground Water will be held November 3-5, 2008 at the Notre Dame Center in Jerusalem. For more information, including the conference agenda, please visit FoEME’s website.
Also, for more about FoEME, read the following Prophecies: Jordanians, Israelis and Palestinians Collaborate to Save the Jordan River; Neighbors’ Paths: Eco-Tourism AND Eco-Peace!; Controversial Red-Dead Sea Canal on Hold – But why?
Image Credit: noanoanoa
Author: Rachel Bergstein
When her vegan summer camp counselor explained to a fifteen-year-old Rachel how the dairy industry pollutes the groundwater in poor rural communities and causes global warming, there was no turning back. Her green fire lit, Rachel became increasingly passionate about the relationship between human societies and the natural environment, particularly about the systemic injustices associated with environmental degradation. After snagging a B.A. in Peace and Justice Studies at the University of Maryland, where she wrote an undergraduate thesis on water injustice in Israel/Palestine and South Africa, Rachel was awarded the New Israel Fund/Shatil’s Rabbi Richard J. Israel Social Justice Fellowship to come and spread the green gospel in Israel for the 2009-2010 academic year. She currently interns for Friends of the Earth Middle East in their Tel Aviv office. When Rachel is not having anxiety about her ecological footprint, carbon and otherwise, she can be found in hot pursuit of the best vegetarian food Tel Aviv has to offer. She also blogs about her experience as an NIF fellow and environmentalist in Israel at organichummus.wordpress.com. Rachel can be reached at rachelbergstein (at) gmail (dot) com.
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