A press release from EEG:

Emirates Environment Group (EEG) conducted its biggest ever environmental Students’ Workshop series with more than 400 students participating accompanied by 90 teachers from English and Arabic schools. Students ranging from 10 to 18 years old, expressed their concern about the impact of global climate change and the need for concrete action from people in meeting its challenges. The students were very vocal on expressing solutions to help solve this global environmental menace. The students recommended a drastic change in people’s wasteful ways and urged the government to implement stricter laws and implement more programs to protect the environment.

The students put forward ideas, suggestions and solutions to address global climate change through skits, posters and poetry. The students, hailing from primary, sub-senior and senior grades from public and private schools across the Emirates were assembled in a unique three-day workshop on environment, sponsored by Al Safi Club for Friends of the Environment and the British Council, and hosted by Rashid School for Boys who has been hosting the event for the last six years.

Aptly themed “Tomorrow’s Environmentalists”, the purpose of the triple workshops was to inculcate environment friendly attitudes and ethics among today’s youth. They also promote values like fraternity, peer empathy and interaction.

The workshops were facilitated by Mr. Shaikh Fakhar Khalid, a lecturer in Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and Remote Sensing in the Medway School of Sciences, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Greenwich University. Mr. Khalid has studied the climate change phenomenon very closely with the help of satellite imagery. His talks focused on the traces of the climate change phenomenon across the globe, especially its effects on the arid to semi-arid conditions of the Middle East and Arabian Desert. Mr. Khalid demonstrated the use of satellite data to support the theory of global warming and climate change.

The topic ‘Global Climate Change’ is currently generating a great deal of debate and discourse across the world in the wake of unprecedented natural calamities, destruction of life and property. It has also featured prominently on the list of topics suggested by participants in previous workshops. Thus focus was given on climate change in order to increase the students’ understanding of the reasons and pitfalls of the phenomenon, and to cultivate in them the urge to contribute in environmental protection.

The students through the interactive session expressed their understanding of the issue and proposed ways to halt and even reverse this environmental challenge. The students showed their ideas through posters, presentation and skits. The students recommended a simpler, eco-friendly lifestyle for people in the UAE. The students gave simple tips that could be done in

their homes and alternative energy solutions to halt the worsening climate change phenomenon.

Since the students were grouped having English and Arabic speaking students, the workshop became a challenge for the students to practice team work. The workshop proved to be a good platform for learning as much as making new friends. The workshop also provided a very good platform for teachers to learn and experience first hand, new, useful and inventive ways to impart environmental education to students, which they can use when they return to their respective schools. EEG distributed a CD containing the lectures and other materials to the participating schools.

Addressing the students EEG’s Chairperson Habiba Al Marashi said, “There is a strong need to address global climate change concretely and decisively.  The Students’ Workshop is our way of responding to this environmental challenge. Young people hold the future in their hands. It is imperative to provide them the value of caring for the environment. The Workshops will have immediate and long term effects.”