Arafa's work with Sharqeya village earns him development award.CAIRO: The Society of Writers on Environment and Development in Egypt Egypt (ē`jĭpt), Arab. Misr, biblical Mizraim, officially Arab Republic of Egypt, republic (2005 est. pop. 77,506,000), 386,659 sq mi (1,001,449 sq km), NE Africa and SW Asia. granted the award of Man of the Year for Environment and Development to physics professor Dr Salah Arafa. He was chosen for his pioneering work with solar energy solar energy, any form of energy radiated by the sun, including light, radio waves, and X rays, although the term usually refers to the visible light of the sun. and recycling recycling, the process of recovering and reusing waste products—from household use, manufacturing, agriculture, and business—and thereby reducing their burden on the environment. in rural Egypt and his overall contribution to sustainable development Sustainable development is a socio-ecological process characterized by the fulfilment of human needs while maintaining the quality of the natural environment indefinitely. The linkage between environment and development was globally recognized in 1980, when the International Union , the Society's Secretary General, Susan Zaki, said. The Society was established 13 years ago by journalist Salama Ahmed Salama to promote environmental work and awareness in Egypt. Arafa is a faculty member of the department of physics at the American University in Cairo American University in Cairo, at Cairo, Egypt; English language; founded 1919. It has faculties of anthropology, computer science, economics and political science, engineering, English and comparative literature, management, mass communication, psychology, science, . For more than 30 years he has been working on environmental sustainable development. "There is a need for concentrated effort on two fronts: on the thousands of poor villages that produce our food and on the concentration of our population of 80 million in 5 percent of our territory," said Arafa. His work in this field started in Basaisa, a small rural settlement in the Sharqeya governorate. Arafa's idea was to transform the poverty- and illiteracy-stricken village by using what the local population already had: a community, agriculture and human capital. Through training and different projects, the village became a model for rural sustainable development. "When I went to the village 35 years ago I found three things: very kind people, famine famine Extreme and protracted shortage of food, resulting in widespread hunger and a substantial increase in the death rate. General famines affect all classes or groups in the region of food shortage; class famines affect some classes or groups much more severely than , and garbage garbage: see solid waste. ," Arafa told Daily News Egypt. He started working with the villagers to train them in solving their own problems by themselves. To take care of the garbage, the village used bio-gas technology: organic waste was collected and then burned to produce gas for household energy and high-quality fertilizers. To increase agricultural and household production, Arafa worked with the local population on time management and efficiency of production methods. Workshops were set up to train people in different trades: knitting knitting, construction of a fabric made of interlocking loops of yarn by means of needles. Knitting, allied in origin to weaving and to the netting and knotting of fishnets and snares, was apparently unknown in Europe before the 15th cent. , sewing sewing: see needlework. , metal working, etc. To ensure sustainability of the village progress, the local community set up two organizations: a community development organization and a production cooperative. Today, Basaisa has become the emblem of rural sustainable development and a model followed in Egypt and abroad. The Egyptian government has tried using the model in an initiative called "Shorouk" in which 1,000 villages were selected to implement sustainable development projects. Arafa praised the efforts of the government, but said that care should be taken to ensure true sustainability. "Sustainable development is not to send an engineer to a village. It is to make an engineer out of the villager." In Arafa's opinion, Egypt needs education of the public. "We need public education, but not in the way we usually do it here in Egypt -- by collecting the elite in big hotels." He stressed the importance of reaching out to the general public, to people who do not have ready access to new ideas and technology. "We have to do it now, so that it is not too late," Arafa concluded. Daily NewsEgypt 2009 Provided by Syndigate.info an Albawaba.com company |
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