Green Jeddah project wants to teach Saudi youth importance of recycling, cleaning up toxic waste and pollution.
Saudi Arabia’s interest in environmental issues and projects is now being tailored to attract the country’s large youth population, now said to compose as much as 60% of the entire population of 28 million. In an article published in the Middle East Arab World’s leading English language daily, Arab News , an environmental interest group, Green Jeddah, is trying make the country’s youth more involved in dealing with issues of environmental problems in Jeddah and other major population areas in the country. We know that sewage leaks and garbage dumps threaten the Red Sea, but what other problems to Saudis face?
Largely composed of young female students, the NGO is involved in trying to find solutions to the problems of toxic wastes and environmental “degradation” that is affecting this Red Sea coastal city, which is also the country’s largest sea port.
As some Green Prophet readers may remember, Jeddah was the location of some wide scale sewage flooding back in November, 2009, which was caused by a sudden torrential rain storm that occurred during annual Hajj pilgrimage which killed more than 120 people.
The motto of this new environmental awareness organization is “we should live and let the environment live as well.”
Using different methods to make people more aware of environmental issues, Green Jeddah has hosted educational seminars to explain the benefits of recycling and being environmentally conscious.
Ms. Alaa Al-Mizyen, a banking and finance student at Dar Al-Hekma College and co-founder of Green Jeddah summed up; the goals of the organization by saying that “we identify ourselves with solutions and not problems” when addressing local environmental issues.
Green Jeddah is targeting the country’s youth population, since so many of them are under age 21, and as such are the future leaders of the country. The group is particularly interested in dealing with issues of pollution and toxic waste, both of which are prevalent in many areas, due to the country being a major petroleum exporter.
Saudi Arabia recently expressed interest in becoming a member of the AbuDhabi based International Renewal Energy Agency (IRENA) and is interested in building solar energy power facilities such as ones that will replace using oil with those fueled by solar energy to power the country’s many desalination plants.
Another co-founder of Green Jeddah, Lulwa Binmahfooz, put in another way in getting the country’s younger population to become involved in improving the environment: “The youth are like seeds. If you take good care of the seeds, they will grow and turn into flowers”.
Perhaps Green Jeddah will one day team up with Green Prophet in greening the entire region. We can only hope this will come to pass.
:: Green Jeddah blog
More Saudi Arabia environmental articles:
Saudi Arabia Seeks to Join International Renewable Energy Group IRENA
More Than 120 People Killed in Sewage flooding in Jeddah
Saudi Arabia to Replace Oil With Sun Power for its Desalination Plants
Author: Maurice Picow
Maurice Picow grew up in Oklahoma City, U.S.A., where he received a B.S. Degree in Business Administration. Following graduation, Maurice embarked on a career as a real estate broker before making the decision to move to Israel. After arriving in Israel, he came involved in the insurance agency business and later in the moving and international relocation fields. Maurice became interested in writing news and commentary articles in the late 1990’s, and now writes feature articles for the The Jerusalem Post as well as being a regular contributor to Green Prophet. He has also written a non-fiction study on Islam, a two volume adventure novel, and is completing a romance novel about a forbidden love affair. Writing topics of particular interest for Green Prophet are those dealing with global warming and climate change, as well as clean technology - particularly electric cars.
Greeting from IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature )….West Asia office in AMMAN
I went through your association profile where I fund many interesting areas that we can cooperate together . As you may know IUCN is the largest environmental network in all over the world working for nature conservation where environmental friendly practices are very important for clean environment .we are currently working in KSA through our member Ministry of Agriculture , Presidency of meteorological and Environment protection (PME ) in Jeddah and Wildlife commission .We are very keen to meet and explore areas for cooperation .
I will be Riyadh 3-5 May in a meeting .
we will cooperate with our KSA members to development awareness campaign in Env. conservation and marine management. We have number of ideas to work in KSA and specifically in Jedddah , we visited it two times
Please let me know how we can meet event through skype to discuss how we can unify our efforts in working in KSA .
For more information about IUCN please see this link : http://www.iun.org/row
Waiting for your feedback
This is very good to do; somebody should be take step on this big issue. Cleaning is very important for good and clean environment. We all should be participating to safe environment safe future. We are also belong to this field sewerage removing services in Jubail and manifa and ras-al-khair. We are looking to future for do something for our future. Know we are planning to start Solid waste removing services. We have very small group and investment but our ambitions are very big for safe the environment safe world.
We have aim to do something but we have no great leading.
Thanks
Best Regards,
it is a very good step about cleaning and save our environmet. i think this organizatin take both step Opratinal and Advocasy and should take support from Higher Authoritis and create a sense of Ownership because The Earth in which we are living is our and we should take care of it.
thanks.
best regards