Nadia Makram Ebeid

Two years ago, Egypt took its first step to putting environment on its political agenda. It was then that the government created a separate Ministry of State for Environmental Affairs headed by Nadia Makram Ebeid as minister.
Ebeid seemed like a natural choice to head up the ministry. She has a long-standing record with the international environmental community. She first joined the United Nations in the late 1970’s as head of the United Nations Program Monitoring Unit. In 1979, she was appointed as U.N. Senior Sustainable Development Officer in charge of agriculture, water and environment sectors, a post she held for 14 years.

Ebeid also served as Development Officer with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization’s Regional Office for the Near East.
The ministry is a first in the Middle East, which makes Ebeid a pioneer in her field. But it also means that she has been building a ministry from the ground up.
“When I first became minister, I knew that I was setting a precedent, not only for Egypt, but for the entire region,” says Ebeid. “This was a tremendous responsibility and I knew I would need help.”

Ebeid consulted many qualified experts in the field of environment to set an agenda. She admits there were many concerns that needed to be addressed, but she needed to set priorities. The whole time she was keeping in mind that her main premise was to find a balance between accelerated development and environmental improvement.
In addition to organizing her goals, she forged partnerships between the public and private sector to improve the environment and increase public awareness of the environment.
“I know that all these [objectives were] just small steps in a very long road to protecting the environment, but every road starts with a few baby steps,” she says.
The most pressing issue was purging the Nile water from industrial discharge dumping. There were 34 industrial institutions in Egypt discarding their waste in the Nile. Ebeid says the most effective method was to work with these institutions rather than using law and order.
“I started out by sending young representatives to discuss the problem with the institutions. Then I followed with a visit to discuss alternatives to dispose their waste. The next step was for us to constantly follow up with them so that it was more of an alliance at all the different stages and together we set a deadline for them. It was very impressive that almost all of them met their deadline. Here we are, four years later, all 34 industrial institutions have stopped industrial dumping in the Nile.”

This process cost the private industry around E£ 350 million, but it was money well spent. Lately, the ministry analyzed the Nile water independently and sent samples to a laboratory in Tokyo for analyses. According to Ebeid, both tests showed a significant reduction in the contamination of the river water.

Ebeid says it’s just as important for the public to participate more actively in environmental protection as it is for industry. She believes the best way to achieve that is at the ground-roots level. Recently, the Minister of Education agreed to introduce an environmental component in elementary school education as a way to increase environmental awareness. But she also says the media play a very important role.
“There’s been an increase in the number of television and radio programs discussing environmental issues and the more the environment is mentioned, the more aware people will be of it in their daily lives.”

The ministry is also laying the groundwork to stop the burning of agricultural byproducts and garbage. Last November, Cairo was under a cloud of black smoke for more than a week when rice farmers set fire to their agriculture refuse. Ebeid says a committee was setup to discuss the matter with farmers and suggest alternative uses for their agricultural waste, such as using them as fertilizer or animal feed.

The incineration of garbage is also high up on Ebeid’s agenda. For years now, the main form of garbage disposal in Egypt was burning it. Ebeid plans to change all that in the near future by building sanitary landfills and establishing programs for recycling at the ground level.
Ebeid’s motto is “the environment is for life” and she believes that slowly, Egypt’s environment will improve. But she knows this process will take plenty of time. 
“It took many countries is Europe almost 20 years to get to the degree of environmental awareness they’re at today. We’re trying to catch up with them and their example is on our side.”

As for Egypt’s environmental future, Ebied believes it lies in the hands of the younger generation, and children’s involvement in bettering the environment will give Egypt the competitive edge it needs to survive in the modern world.
“The youth are essential and they must become more actively involved in protecting Egypt’s future,” says Ebied. “The environment is just as important as the economy when it comes to Egypt’s development and future and the youth must be just as involved in both.”