JEDDAH, 19 September 2003 — The first Saudi-Japanese workshop on greening of the desert — “Improving the Desert Environment” — concluded in Jeddah yesterday morning. The workshop focused on water and the environment, and the three areas covered extensively included the greening of arid land and sustaining oases, developing non-conventional water resources using solar energy, and predicting annual changes in rainfall.
Dr. Adil Bushnak, who chaired the workshop, said the outcome had been very positive. “It has contributed to maintaining public awareness of the need to develop and conserve water resources in the Kingdom,” he told Arab News last night from a meeting held to review and follow up decisions from the conference.
“We hope to apply the new knowledge and technologies that were discussed at the conference, and we have plans in place and a project is under way already.”
The Arafat Greening Project, which involves the planting of trees to provide a cool microclimate and extra shade for pilgrims, is a privately funded and developed project. “It has had limited scientific and technological input,” said Bushnak, “but it has proved a successful demonstration.”
A website to disseminate and gather information and ideas will soon appear as another step in increasing the knowledge base of water use in the Kingdom. “We want to share our knowledge and gather the specialized input from others with special interest in desert areas,” he said. The site is already under construction and is due to appear shortly.
Bushnak explained that he felt important parts of resource management were management as well as physical capacity building. “Whilst it is important to take on and examine saline water agricultural techniques and develop water conservation, it is equally important to develop decision makers and managers who understand and can operate the technologies.” With that in view, a management training project is planned for Makkah which, Bushnak hopes will “see Makkah as a world center of knowledge and technology for prospering in the desert environment.”
Makato Harada, the project manager of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd., Technical Headquarters, said, “The Saudi-Japanese cooperation in water and environmental research activity is part of the scientific cooperation program participated in by various countries including Holland, Italy and China. This program has been funded and conducted as a project of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in Japan. It is expected to continue for several years in order to achieve commercially applicable scientific solutions” to living in harsh and arid conditions.
The project combines fields including meteorology, oceanography, engineering, agriculture, and social science to improve living conditions in the desert environment.
