Arab Environment Monitor: Prospects for Second Year

Starting this September, the Arab Environment Monitor finishes it first year as a regional environmental blog and prepares for the second year with a lot of excitement and potential ideas for improvement.

It was a nice coincidence that I was participating in an IUCN organized workshop entitled "New Learning for Sustainability in the Arab Region" that was held in the magnificant Bibliotheca Alexandrina. You can have more details about the workshop in this wiki site.

During the workshop I presented the experience of the Arab Environment Monitor Blog as a case study for the use of new learning tools for environmental education and awareness. I will post a more elaborate article about the workshop later today but I just want to mention that the presentation and the idea of blogging was received with high enthusiasm from the professional participants. Many of them expressed their interest to establish blogs.

The workshop and its brain dynamics of learning and sustainability thoughts have helped me to try to plan for an effective blog in the coming year. In the past year I was focusing on copy and paste blogging where articles and press releases were posted here as a source of information plus some articles of my own. This is a way of "distributing content".

What I hope for in 2008 is to "create content" and where this blog can be a source for original information, analysis and news related to regional environmental issues with the framework of innovation and best applications.

To do this, I need to have a focused approach where the main priority themes will be tackled. I have reduced my list of themes from 20 to 10 which is now more practical to follow and more focused. The main themes for the new AEM will be:

1- Water Resources management.

2- Energy and Climate Change.

3- Land degradation and desertification.

4- Biodiversity and Ecosystem management

5- Coastal Zone Management and Marine Environment.

6- Green Industries and pollution prevention

7- Urbanization

8- Education and Awareness.

9- Environmental Policies and Legislation

10- Environmental Economics.

The 10 themes will of course be linked with each Arab country as well as global environmental issues when necessary.

The sources of information will expand to include information from professional organizations and networks and synthesis of media outlets's productions.

I hope you will enjoy reading AEM and a more felt impact will emerge.