Doha: As governments in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) implement sustainable policies to combat climate change and environmental challenges, an expert has disclosed that conservation would be a better solution to sustainability in a region where the essential commodity, water, is scarce.
According to the United Nations, the MENA region is home to 15 out of 20 of the world’s most water-scarce countries. The situation is predicted to worsen due to population growth, unsustainable water management, rapid economic growth and ongoing conflicts.
Water consumption levels in the Gulf Corporation Council rank among the highest in the world. Qatar has one of the highest water consumption rates, and in 2020, it reached 438 million gallons per day, while production capacity topped 476 million gallons daily.
Speaking to The Peninsula on the sidelines of the International Conference on Innovation and Technological Advances for Sustainability (ITAS) hosted by the University of Doha for Science and Technology (UDST), Prof. Belgacem Haba, Vice-President of Adeia Silicon Valley, USA, stressed that the region could contribute more to protecting resources and the environment if people were educated more about conservation.
Prof. Haba lauded Qatar’s sustainability strategy but urged the country to beware of air quality especially being an oil and gas exporting country. He also said water conservation should be a priority.
“People try to be sustainable by changing energies, but the biggest one is conservation which is better than sustainability because it costs less,” Prof. Haba said, adding that preparing a world of young people who are knowledgeable of green technology and thinking would protect the future of the planet.
“For every dollar you put, you can conserve more. You can save more energy than generating energy. Conservation is an education problem, and we must educate people that when you are in front of the faucet, you don’t leave the water running all the time. You don’t sit and enjoy yourself for two hours in the shower. There are many ways to do this, but we are not there yet,” he added.
Addressing climate change and its impacts, Prof. Haba stressed that rich and developing countries would suffer the effects of climate change, but developing countries may suffer more. He said the people are unaware of the dangers of some of their activities and will pollute more, becoming too expensive for these countries to clean in the long run.
Meanwhile, Prof. Haba cited the expanding global population, which has surpassed 8 billion with limited resources. He added that the world is polluting more than before, and people need to be educated more on the dangers.
“We need to educate the population saying on how to be sustainable. We have to start early, though I believe we are already late. The land is not changing much, and we have to increase food productivity, which has to be good so as not to create diseases. So all these systems, these cycles need to be addressed.”
