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Environmental champions

Jun 03,2018 - Last updated at Jun 03,2018

A week ago on Saturday, a modest celebration was held at Al Ahli Club, in which two NGOs: The Energy Conservation and Sustainable Environment Society and the Centre for Strategic Energy Studies awarded prizes to the winners of the art competition on the environment, which the two NGOs organised for students of public schools. The awards, were modest, consisting mainly of books on the environment presented by the author, Ayoub Abu Dayyeh. Their purpose, and indeed that of the competition was to help make children aware that they have a mission to leave the Earth a better place than they found it.

It all started some time ago, when Abu Dayyeh told me with considerable distress about a group of children whom he saw setting fire to a tree in a street in Amman. The children were probably acting out of boredom, but this does not change the fact that they committed an act of wanton vandalism against public property, which was particularly harmful in a country that suffers from deforestation, earth erosion and desertification. It is unacceptable that children of school age should not be aware of the need to care for the environment.

When I was a schoolboy, environmental issues were on the agenda of very few specialists. Our source of information was the Ministry of Education syllabus, which taught us that Jordan was so fertile, it used to be the principal source of wheat for Rome, until the Ottomans felled all the trees to run the Hijaz railway. 

Sources with greater concern for facts acknowledge that Jordan used to be verdant in the days of the Nabateans, roughly in the 4th century BCE. But as the population grew beyond the land’s carrying capacity, overgraing and over-logging caused desertification which, combined with a series of earthquakes in the Byzantine and early Islamic eras, devastated Jordan’s agricultural base.

To reverse this damage, Jordan launched an ambitious reforestation programme in the 1960s. Sadly, however, it is much easier to create a desert than a forest. No matter how many saplings are planted, goats devastate them within minutes. And to make things worse, Jordanian picnickers, when they finish, tip their charcoal grill over and leave without making sure to put out the fire completely.

Jordan will never be able to reverse the damage to its environment without the active participation of the public. This country needs a persistent long-term information campaign to teach good social habits. Children and their parents should learn that, when they go on a picnic, the only thing they should take away is photographs and the only thing they should leave behind is their footprints. 

Before anyone says that there are more important issues on which Jordan should concentrate, there are not. Nothing is more important than keeping our planet fit for human life and to this end, every little bit helps. 

We should never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

 

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