Abdelnaser Omran

Identifying municipal solid waste management opportunities in Al-Bayda City, Libya

In Libya, municipal solid waste management is one of the services provided by the authorities to keep the county clean. This study was conducted in the City of Al-Bayda, located in the eastern part of Libya, as there have been several major problems facing the city in dealing with solid waste management. One of these problems is the generation, collection, handling, transportation, recycling, and disposal of municipal solid waste (MSW). This study has identified that the ongoing disposal of MSW to poorly engineered “dump sites” on the outskirts of the city is unsustainable and will not meet the demands of the growing population and increasing urbanization currently experienced within Al-Bayda. Factors impacting the decision-making and operational processes of MSW include lack of resources and services that significantly affect the disposal of waste, an inadequate number of waste collection containers making the distance to these containers for many households excessive, and thus leading to an increasing likelihood of dumping solid waste in open areas and roadsides. The study recommends that the city government of Al-Bayda should identify synergies and increase partnership-working arrangements with the private sector to ensure efficient management of MSW within the city area.

Innovative Sustainable Solid Waste Management in Nigeria

Problems associated with solid waste management (SWM) have proved to be complex in origin and in solution. In Nigeria SWM is characterized by inefficient collection methods, insufficient coverage of the collection system and improper disposal of solid waste. This chapter reviews the current status of SWM in Nigeria. For SWM to be sustainable in Nigeria a greater financial investment needs to be made, possibly including provision through local rates and taxes. In addition, appropriate technologies in line with the nature of garbage generated need to be explored. Finally the effort and role played by the informal sector in SWM in Nigeria needs to be recognised, but there is urgent need for this sector to be formalized so that its role can be geared towards achieving sustainability.

On Innovative Sustainable City Architecture Models for Sustainable Cities in Asia or in Europe

As most of the people throughout the world host into cities so, urban environment should be a better place to live. The subject of sustainably needs to be focused in relation to this obvious trend: an avoidably rising of urban population and its fast development rate causes the problems of environmental compatibility between demographic burden and the amount of natural resources which cities consume. In this situation green building and sustainable development are the most important terms in construction industry. In Asia, the green building effort is still at an early stage, at levels below 5 in the sustainable scale of 1–10. Under such circumstances and in the area of sustainable architecture, biomimicry or bio inspired design is debated by researchers, professionals and experts. In fact, constructing green buildings and constructing old ones greener neither is going to work out the world’s environmental issues nor is it going to cause energy self-sufficiency or drop utility bills, but it is one of the most crucial areas on which we will probably see world fights about change with view to the protection of the atmosphere especially, with consideration to fast increasing of population.

The Effects of Climate Change Risks on the Mud Architecture in Wadi Hadhramaut, Yemen

This study aims at studying the effects of climate change risks on the mud architecture in Wadi Hadramout, Yemen. The intention of this study was to contribute to mud architecture in Wadi Hadhramaut by identifying and addressing the effect of expected climate changes on mud architecture building to maintain this unique architecture and human heritage toward sustainable development. This study has concluded that climate change scenarios in Yemen, especially in Wadi Hadhramaut, indicate that a significant increase in the rated temperature in that region will appear in the fifth decade of this century. The scenarios also confirm on the expected increase in precipitation, which increases the probability of exposure to the mud architecture in the region to multiple risks and disasters that could reach the threat of the disappearance of villages and cities in Wadi Hadhramaut which contain more than 90% of the components of buildings currently made from mud architecture.

Factors Contributing to the Catastrophic Flood in Malaysia

In 2014, a flood hit a Kelantan state located in the East Coast part of Malaysia, causing a massive destruction which left this state paralyzed. The National Security Council (NSC) confirmed that the massive flood that hit Kelantan was the worst in the history of the state. Most of the divisions of that state were flooded with water with high content of mud. Thus, this study was conducted to look at the factors that cause a catastrophic flood in Kelantan state, and it was particularly focused on one of the districts in the State, named Kuala Krai district. In conclusion, it was found that equally natural and human factors contributed the catastrophic flood in Kelantan state. This study led to several useful recommendations; one of these is to provide an awareness program for the residents in Malaysia on such disasters. This program can provide sufficient knowledge and awareness to the residents about the important steps or actions that can be taken in case of a flood in order to stay safe. The potential impact of weather modification technology, especially cloud seeding, on the Kelantan flood is shortly addressed, although further details of this risky technology would go beyond the scope of this chapter.

Impact of Environmental Factors on Tourism Industry in Pakistan: A Study from the Last Three Decades

From the context of Pakistan, current study works on the key purpose to evaluate the various environmental factors and their impacts on the local tourism sector in Pakistan. For this aim there are three major dimensions of the overall environment; economic and financial indicators, social development and macroclimate changes have been selected with their key indicators based on the data sets from world development indicator (WDI). Separate standardized regression equations for each of the three factors are developed by focusing on significant statistical tests and techniques. The findings of the study reveal the fact that economic and financial indicators have a significant influence on tourism earnings, while social development and macroclimate indicators have both positive and adverse impact on the tourism industry in Pakistan. All the models are statistically significant and have provided strong evidence for the key managers to develop strategic planning for tourism industry after consideration of stated factors of the study. Additionally, this study explores the association between the key environmental factors and tourism sector in such context in a very first time. However, findings are limited to the contextual framework of Pakistan only and cannot be generalized to other economies. Finally, by adding more factors from the local environment like terrorism, the cogent for the future studies can be boosted.

Municipal Solid Waste Management Practices in the Central Part of Libya

A solid waste management (SWM) system includes the generation of waste, storage, collection, transportation, processing, and final disposal. It is a basic public necessity, and this service is provided by respective local bodies (LBs) in Libya. This chapter aims to examine the current status of municipal solid waste management practices in Ajdabiya city located in the central part of Libya. In fact, all Libyan cities are still struggling to achieve the elements of all MSW such as generation, collection, disposal, recycling, etc. Survey data are gathered from a random sample of Ajdabiya city. Descriptive statistical analyses are conducted using the Statistical Packages for Social Sciences (SPSS) software program. Findings have shown that majority of the residents were dissatisfied with the current existing solid waste management program in the city. This study also found that the current SWM services are inefficient. It was also found that improper solid waste management caused environmental pollution and significantly impacts the quality of life of nations as well as deteriorated public health in these cities.

The impacts of the waterfront development in Iskandar Malaysia

The increasing number of waterfront projects shows that the concept of waterfront development has contributed to the advancement of the Malaysian construction industry. This study seeks to assess the impacts of the implementation of waterfront development in Iskandar Malaysia eliciting the perceived relative importance of these impacts. A comprehensive literature review has been conducted to collate the potential impacts of the waterfront development. A total of 363 sets of questionnaires were distributed to the contractors and developers registered under G7 category of the Construction Industry Development Board in Malaysia. Results show that the most significant influence of the waterfront development is related to economic benefits, while environmental impacts are not considered as a priority for this category of stakeholders. In addition, this study also indicates that the implementation of the waterfront projects has generated numerous job opportunities within the developed region. Moreover, exchanging knowledge in the planning and managing of the waterfront development is imperative to the development of the waterfront projects. Nevertheless, the shortcomings of these developments, such as the negative environmental impact on natural beaches and the coastline (i.e. pollution) as well as human-related issues (i.e. excessive human settlement), should not be taken lightly. This research confirms that the reclamation of land for waterfront development is closely correlated with the destruction of these natural structures.

Strategies Towards the New Sustainability Paradigm

The “New Sustainability Paradigm” is considered the most innovative, democratic, and sustainable one of six different scenario classes (Market Forces and Policy Reform as conventional scenarios, Breakdown and Fortress World as Barbarization scenarios, and Eco-Communalism and the New Sustainability Paradigm as Great Transition scenarios) developed by the Global Scenario Group (GSG) of the Stockholm Environmental Institute (SEI) to depict possible future real life scenarios and further elaborated in Raskin’s Great Transition essay from 2002. Civil Society will be the key player in a “New Sustainability Paradigm” in which the search for a liberating, humanistic, and ecological reform changes the character of global civilization, leading to global solidarity, mutual cultural enrichment, and economic ties. As shown in this chapter, an important precondition for this development is a clear defi nition of Sustainable Development, a term consisting of two elements: One element depicting stability and another element depicting a process of change. Thus, “Sustainable Development” is a development which manages to preserve existing essential items, systems, and values while adapting to new conditions in a fl exible way.

Transitions in the Middle East: The Arabian Spring with Focus on Libya

According to the mass media, the Arabian spring, a series of revolutions in the Arabian countries, which originally started in Tunisia back in December 2010, then spread to Egypt and Libya in February 2011, and later on to other Arabian countries like Syria and Yemen, started as a genuine grass-root-movement due to serious human right violations. In the first half of 2014, a survey was conducted in Libya to find out how people in Libya who experienced the Arabian Spring perceived the situation before and after the Arabian Spring. The survey revealed that the Arabian Spring movement indeed started as a grass-root-movement, because people in Libya were dissatisfied with the situation in their country due to high unemployment and the wrong people in high positions but was hijacked later on by Western powers. In sum, the overwhelming majority of participants had the impression that the situation in Libya deteriorated after the Arabian Spring.