Workshop in Sana’a Environmental education promoted [Archives:2003/01/Health]

In a workshop about environmental education and nationwide development held in Sana’a recently, researchers focused on a range of Yemen’s environmental issues.
The included developing Yemen’s forest areas and diversity, expanding natural resources, decreasing pollution and preventing the extinction of some biotic life that creates environmental crisis.
The regional UNESCO office for education in the Arabic countries and the Islamic for Education and sciences and culture organization (ISESCO) participated in the workshop. They focussed on modernizing school curricula in Yemen as one important means for raising environmental awareness.
Education and the environment
The submitted papers of the researchers focussed on the importance of including environmental education in the curricula to achieve the following goals:
-Assist the society members to acquire the environmental awareness
-Help the society to acquire different experiences related to environment and its problems
-Get the members of the society to be acquainted with environmental problems.
-Push the members of the society to participate in protection the environment.
The researchers put systematic suggestions to merge environmental concepts in the educational curricula, and accompanied activities were determined to be implemented through programs for spreading environmental awareness among the people.
The researchers also determined the textbooks that contain environmental issues, which are the Holy Qura’an, Arabic language, sociology, science, Math and English language as well as vocational, technical and physical education.
In textbook of science the supposed environmental issues should focus on pollution resulted from chemical industries, noise pollution, the air, its features, contents and pollution.
Other education
Educational researchers submitted a water education project that aims at alleviating the shortage of water in Yemen, resulting in environmental, social and economic damages besides raising awareness among the people about the proper usage of water.
The project suggested steps and procedures are to be taken in embodying the water concepts in the textbooks in different levels.
The workshop also recommended the importance of investing water resources to generate job opportunities and an income for the poor and jobless ones by producing building substances from the local environmental materials such as soil and rocks; by carrying out experiments in the agriculture fields like increasing the monetary yields as the coffee, cotton and bee breading; and by paying attention to fishery and sea creatures and by protecting the vocational producing and support its fields such as the pottery and ceramist and woolen industry.
The workshop concluded that poverty and environmental deterioration is a result of cumulative of systems and policies and social and economic relations.
It also stimulated the government to adopt extensive educational and developmental policies to deal with problems of environment and income reduction and try to support them technically and institutionally as well as facilitating the investments for the local environmental resources and encourage the cooperative work for providing the essential services.

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