Greening the Desert? A Qatar bank and the UN are now partners.
Parts of the Middle East, especially in the Persian Gulf area will get a bigger environmental boost thanks to an alliance between Qatar’s Doha Bank and the UN’s Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, UNESCO.
In an article published in the Eye of Dubai news site, the Doha Bank, one of the Qatar Emirate’s largest, has entered into a formal alliance with the UN organization to work together on various environmental programs to promote a greener environment.
The programs include bringing children together at a young age to get them involved in projects that will make them “environmental advocates” from a young age. These “eco-school projects” will be designed to create student awareness on environmental and related sustainable development issues, and will also include beach clean-up and tree planning projects.
According to Doha Bank’s Chairman, Sheikh Abdul Rehman Bin Mohammad Jabor Al Thani:
“The Doha Bank and UNESCO partnership will further strengthen Doha Bank’s mission and vision to protect our environment and reduce our carbon footprint towards achieving carbon neutrality. Doha Bank continues to develop more energy-efficient products and services. Our leadership and contribution in this field has garnered us the award for the Best Green Bank in the Middle East and the Best Public Awareness Campaign from Qatar Today.”
UNESCO and Doha Bank Officials Meet to Finalize Green Alliance
Before this new alliance, Qatar has been involved in a number of environmental projects including Energy City Qatar, which will feature special solar panel heating and cooling systems and will contain “multiple sustainable technologies to achieve a LEED [Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design] Gold certification.”
Other Qatar green projects are a biofuel Airbus project for Qatar Airways, a new green LEED Convention Center (check out the beautiful pictures at previous link), and a planned joint environmental project with Syria to turn desert areas into usable pasture lands – thus “greening the deserts.”
The alliance with UNESCO may prove to be one of the most rewarding, as it will put its emphasis in education, together with science and culture to induce more responsibility towards the environment with evolvement in various practices including green seminars and conferences, recycling, beach clean-up, tree planting and other steps to instill a social responsibility towards the environment.
It’s a good idea that Muslim countries like Qatar are becoming more involved in environmental projects; since they have the most to lose if the world climate change situation worsens. As we noted previously, much of the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims live in countries which are being affected the most from the effects of climate change, including desertification. There is still much that the Muslim World can do to show that it can unite and help reverse the effects of global warming and climate change.
Alliances like those between the Doha Bank and UNESCO can be a very positive step in helping to achieve these environmental goals.
Images via the BBC
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