The Arab Forum for Environment and Growth issued a report yesterday titled "The Green Economy in a Changing Arab World" which points out that the performance of the Arab economies was poor during the last four decades despite the fact that some Arab countries have adopted aggressive models for economic growth. The report criticizes Arab countries for having undermined progress in the social and environmental areas thereby causing poverty, unemployment, threats to food and water security and environmental deterioration. These shortcomings, the reports emphasizes, are not the result of natural causes but are the result of political choices.

The report calls for a growth model rooted in a green economy, giving equal weight to economic growth and social justice with sustainable environment. It says that the switch to a green economy requires a re-examination of government policies to provide incentives in the patterns of production, consumption, spending and investment.

In a related news item, the Lebanese minister of the environment said that environmental deterioration had cost the Arab countries $67 billion in 2006, or 4% of GDP and tenfold of inter-Arab trade of goods and services.

Source: daralahyat.com , October 27-28, 2011