 Good morning. It's indeed a great pleasure and honor to be invited by the Middle East Institute in Sowas and the University of London to talk to you today. And as Dr. Hassan mentioned, when he sent an invitation, I thought this is a golden opportunity to talk to you about the recent publication that the United Nations Environment Program has just published and it talks about environmental challenges, the policies and mega-trends that are taking place in the region and what can we do to address them. Of course, first of all, congratulations for the 100-year birthday. Sowas is well known to everybody in the region. I have many colleagues working with me in the UN system who have worked with Sowas and of course this is going to be probably the first step towards a more coordinated, fruitful partnership between the UN environment and Sowas and the Middle East Institute. It is indeed very important to rely on scientists, scholars and people who do know the region very well and probably sometimes looking at the region from an outside perspective. If we do need to have that non-biased scientific research, as you probably know, the UN environment, we call ourselves a science-based organization. And one of our main divisions is the science division. It is used to be called the division of technology, industry and economy. But most recently we have renamed it to be the science division and most of our work is science-based because if you want to make an argument with politicians, with policy makers and so on, it has to be science-based. So partnering with centers of excellence, with institutions is very important for all of us. I am also honored that I am making this presentation only for the second time. The first time was when we launched the publication in Nairobi and Kenya during the United Nations Environment Assembly, which is a, you may call it the parliament of environment ministers, where 193 ministers meet every other year to discuss global environmental issues, regional environmental issues and adopt decisions that become bound for countries to abide to and implement. So the first launch was in May of this year during the assembly and this is the second launch. I am very honored and pleased to do so. And the next, the very next step will be presenting the document to the Council of Arab Ministers responsible for the environment, which is taking place in Cairo early December. And I am the Secretary of that Council. We provide support for the ministers for the dialogue. We bring up important environmental issues where we all discuss and present policy options for policy makers to adopt and of course back implement their decisions and support them in policy and in capacity building and sometimes implementation of our programs. The day before yesterday I was on TV. I don't know if you know the famous Arab singer, Rebalama. He's our goodwill ambassador and he was on a show and he invited me to speak. And one of the questions from the audience was we don't see the UN on the ground helping us tackle our problems. So my answer was simply the UN is not supposed to do things for people. We are supposed to build the capacity of the people for them to do it themselves. So we work on policies. We work on finding the root causes of issues. Why are we not advancing in water management for example? What can we do at the policy level? So we can tackle the issues and problems from the root of it. So we prevent them from happening again because if you beautify a thing it is just a cosmetic solution. But we have to work on really the root causes of it. So as I said we launched it in UNIA, United Nations Environment Assembly. And this is the sixth of the series which we call the Global Environment Outlook. We publish regional reports for our six regions. And the division is just arbitrary. We don't have Asia or Asia Pacific or Africa and what have you. But we try to cover of course the entire globe. So West Asia is one of the six regions. The GeoSex Global Report is expected to be launched in 2018 in the fourth session of the United Nations Environment Assembly. It was supposed to be next year but it was delayed so we changed the timing of the assembly. It is as I mentioned based on science. It is being put by scholars, government representatives, NGOs, stakeholders participating in the process. It's a huge process that spans over two years of work where we convene the old stakeholders responsible for the different aspects of environment and we discuss priorities. The priority setting workshop was held in Amman 2015 where we went through all environmental issues and identified the most important priorities for the region. And then there was another process to identify the trends of emerging issues as we have to keep an eye. The UN environment is the highest environmental authority that is responsible for keeping the environment under review. So it is our duties to predict what's going to happen in the near future or in the future in general and alert policymakers and all those who are concerned to work on them. It was really in the heart of our conference today on conflicts it was amazing that also the scholars from the region identified peace and security as a cross-cutting priority for the region. Talking about occupation in Palestine, it is impeding any efforts for sustainable development. We have been working with donors trying to solicit support to build for example solar systems for energy, generation, water desalination plans and all donors said well for God's sake if we give you billions of dollars and the second day Israel comes and bumps those facilities. So where is the sustainability of our investment? So indeed peace and security is a major issue. Of course you can name maybe you can name all the countries and you would find an element of conflict in each and every country in the region. So the reports which I have a copy here and I will be happy to leave a number of copies with saw us. It's an outlook and we always like to call it an outlook because it doesn't only mention problems but also talks about policy options and what is needed by governments and stakeholders to take the lead in trying to tackle these issues. So what are the issues that have been identified by the group of imminent participants or lead writers? Obviously water resources, shared water resources, 80% of our water resources in the West Asia region comes from outside the region. Air quality has been identified as one major issue. Unsustainable consumption and production more into consumption rather than production. The region is more importing than exporting. Biodiversity challenges and waste generation and management. So as I mentioned peace and security is a cross-cutting issue. The war in Syria we've been talking yesterday and today of the root causes for the conflict and some scholars, some even UN organizations are trying to connect the crisis to environmental issues and there are some, well I cannot say scientifically proven yet, facts that the drought in the north-eastern part of the country over the past 15 years led to the migration of agriculture and farmers from that part into the cities and mainly to Damascus creating pressures on the resources of the capital and other cities. So people argue that this is one of the causes for the issues taking place now in Syria. Of course the refugee crisis, the migration of millions of people within Syria, there are 8 million people displaced within the country and there are more than 2.6 million people who have chosen to flee the country and go to Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan mainly and other countries. You know for Jordan receiving 20% more into its population is a major challenge. For Lebanon to receive 25% more into the population is a challenge on their natural resources, water resources, energy that does not really exist in Lebanon and of course the generation of waste and what have you. The problem in the migration is that in Jordan the issue is confined. People or the government because it's used to do so with a number of crisis happening. Syrians are sent to some refugee camps so most of the refugees go to managed places. In Lebanon the problem is bigger because they don't have camps. They do not allow establishment of camps and even if there is a small camp that is established it is illegal and they close an eye but they integrate into the villages and the villages of Lebanon are already suffering poverty and social issues so adding to the problems within the country. Water probably I cannot say enough about water challenges in the region. Eight out of ten the most scarce countries in the world are in the Arab states region. And of course scarcity of water is measured by the accessibility and how much they get water in addition to the stress on the water resources. So eight out of ten global scarce countries are in our region. More than 75 to 80% of our water resources comes from outside the region. So the issue of management of shared water resources. Countries are, what are they doing? They are over exploiting their water resources. In Jordan they have reached 90% over utilization of their water resources. In Palestine all the aquifers according to the UNEP 2006 report is unreplainable. I mean you cannot do anything with the groundwater resources. It's already desalinized. It is already polluted by the wastewater going into the groundwater and so on. So the issue is really of imminent and high level of seriousness. Regional cooperation almost does not exist on shared water resources. Yes there might be some international conferences on the Nile basin, on the Jordan River basin, on the Euphrates and Tigris and so on. But there are no agreed agreements or conventions for management of shared water resources. I personally worked with the University of Harvard in 1994. Actually when we signed the peace process with Israel, trying to establish a water management authority, a regional water management authority. But of course because Syria doesn't talk to Israel, there's no agreement and of course you cannot establish a shared water authority between two countries while there are two other countries involved in the same water resource being Syria and Lebanon. So it was only a scientific theoretical work that we have done. It was never implemented. So the management of water resources not only between countries at war, but also between neighboring countries. For example there are aquifers that are shared between Jordan and Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, Oman and Yemen, Kuwait and Iraq and what have you. I mean there are a number of those shared water resources. In one of the meetings that I, again I am also the Secretary of the Council of Ministers responsible for water resources. In one of the discussions I was talking about this specific issue and I was calling for the Arabs to adopt agreements and initiate conventions and sign them and put meat into the bones of how are we trying to manage these water resources. And the minister at that time of Saudi Arabia said, yeah, it doesn't happen this way. We are all brothers, so if our king meets the king of Jordan and they say, okay, release 100 million cubic meter to Jordan they will immediately release. So this is the mentality that we have in the region. They don't believe in agreements, signing agreements. They just believe in being brothers and charity and we give what you need and so on. But it is important for the future generations. You cannot always have agreements in such a way. So we do need to establish those international agreements to be able to manage the water resources. Yeah. Okay, five minutes. Really? Okay. Air pollution. One of the issues that we are witnessing and I think there's in a program, somebody talking about dust and sandstorms. This is a major issue in the region. It is not an environmental issue only. It is a socioeconomic environmental phenomena that is causing billions of dollars in loss every single year. For example, imagine the Dubai International Airport closing for hours because of a sandstorm. Imagine in Qatar, this is government announcement. They cannot fly their fighter jets to protect their country in the event of a sandstorm. So it is a major security environmental socioeconomic issue, which we are facing in the region. There are numbers talking about 70,000 premature deaths per year in the West Asia region because of air pollution and mainly indoor air pollution because of the poverty that exists because of the people using production of energy using wood and other means. The issues in the region are even compounded and more complex because of the interrelationship between issues. For example, if you talk about water resources, you talk about desalination. If you talk about desalination, you talk about energy resources needed to desalinate. And if you talk about energy and production of desalinated water, which is mainly used for agricultural purposes, then you are talking about food security. And then this three-tier nexus is very important. And some others, they actually add a fourth one, which is climate change. Imagine if climate change takes place, I mean, it is taking place, but when the temperature rises, when the salinity of the ocean rises, then what happens to the installations for the production of desalinated water? Land degradation is also an important issue. And we have been witnessing that more and more, especially because of urbanization, farmers abandoning their farms and using them for building new cities, even dredging and building in the ocean. Hundreds of new islands are being built in or around the coast of West Asia region. Waste management probably you've heard about the crisis in Lebanon, which has started actually in the 70s, but now it's been taking a much more size that people have started suffering health issues. The number of patients going into the hospitals has quadrupled in few months. And I was there just three days ago talking to the minister's responsible for the portfolio for the file. Unfortunately, because of the failed state in Lebanon, you cannot find a trustworthy entity to talk to. And the major problem for waste management is the lack of trust between the government and between the people. The people doesn't trust the government and the government doesn't trust that the people will support their actions. So we have established an integrated waste management program for Lebanon. So however, we see some positive elements that we can build on. Of course, the 17 sustainable development goals and they are related to all aspects of environmental issues. And please, you know, when we talk about the SDGs, I often hear even some UN colleagues, they say, well, yeah, do you are responsible for goal 6, 7, 13 and what have you? No, we are all responsible for all the 17 development goals. If we cannot integrate environmental issues into the 17 development goals, we fail in demonstrating and implementing the essence of the sustainable development goals. The integrated approach is very important. And the integrated approach is something that we are using in this document to call for the policy actions, integrated water management, integrated waste management, integrated energy management and so on. So the integrated approach is very important for all of our work. I wanted to also touch upon, as Dr. Hassan is an economist, I said I have to say this, economy and environment cannot but work together. Economy depends on environmental resources. But also environmental resources would require sustainable green economic development to continue surviving. And probably you know that the UN environment launched the green economy concept. It was mentioned in the Rio plus 20 declaration 44 times. Now we are talking about inclusive green economy. And we have launched a very innovative initiative which is the UNEP finance initiative. We are working with governors of central banks for the use and utilization of investments from an environmental or sustainable development point of view. We are talking about hundreds of trillions of dollars. If we can green those investments then we can achieve something not only in the wastage region but in all other regions. So what needs to be done for the transformational change, international commitment, of course data availability in the region is a major challenge. And we had held the Eye on Earth Summit last year in Abu Dhabi where we talked about the challenges in getting data, analyzing the data, disseminating the data and using it for policy making. And of course all over cross cutting issue is the financial commitments. I would stop here. I mean there are a couple of slides on how UN environment really tackles environment, peace building and conflicts. Mainly our work used to be a post crisis assessment. So whenever a crisis ceases we go there, assess the damages and provide projects and programs to tackle them. But understanding that environmental issues can be the cause for conflict or cause for cooperation. If you have, I mean in life you select a partner when you have common grounds that you can work with them. Between countries of course there are shared natural resources that can be if utilized effectively can be a source for cooperation rather than conflict. So what we do is provide impartial and scientific information, ensure that environmental dimension is integrated into the conflict, disaster and prevention and build the capacity of member states. One of the issues that I'm working on with the government of Lebanon not only providing an integrated strategic plan for waste management but bringing from the Department of Political Affairs a mediator to be able to talk to the different factions within the country to try to bring them together. So this is part of peace building and conflict prevention. These are the resources where conflicts can happen or cooperation as well. This is some examples of where we have worked and what are the sources of conflicts. Internal conflicts seem to be the highest source of conflicts in the region. Drivers for conflict over natural resources, competition of course and equitable access. We've been talking about people having access to water wells while the poor people do not even have access to safe water and so on. These are the three dimensions that we integrate into peace building and conflict prevention. The prevention and sensitivity, conflict sensitivity, peace building and state building and mitigating the resource cares. So thank you, sir. Thank you.