Environmental Issue in Kuwait

Environmental Issue in Kuwait

Introduction

The State of Kuwait's rapid economic growth has both burdened the environment and left it lagging behind other areas of progress. The attainment of the Millennium Development Goal 7 of Ensuring Environmental Sustainability remains to be challenge with outdated environmental laws and regulations, lack of coordination between institutions, limited institutional capacities and lack of public information on environmental issues.

Discussion

UNDP Kuwait has focused on upstream strategic interventions with the formulation of the National Environmental Strategic Plan and the current efforts to strengthen the institutional performance of the Environmental Public Authority (EPA) enabling it to meet its mandate and obligations (Levine 2007 688-726). It has also contributed to the development of the first Kuwait Integrated Environmental Information Network providing specialists and the public with access to update and reliable demographic and environmental information, using Geographic Information System (GIS) technologies.

UNDP Kuwait is also developing the national institutional and technical capacities for using GIS technologies. Environment and Energy are essential for sustainable development. The poor are disproportionately affected by environmental degradation and lack of access to clean, affordable energy services. These issues are also global as climate change, loss of biodiversity and ozone layer depletion cannot be addressed by countries acting alone.

The government is keen to address all issues of concern to citizens, he said, adding that it is working closely with the parliament to resolve all the problems affecting citizens in Ali Abdullah Al-Salem. "All Kuwaitis are in the same boat and they are all concerned at environmental issues," Al-Roudhan pointed out (Khan and Abdelhak 2000 29).

The Gulf War was fought between Iraq, Kuwait and a number of western countries in 1991. Kuwait had been part of Iraq in the past, but was liberated by British imperialism, as the Iraqi government described it. In August 1990, ...