Press Release

Director-General participates in the First Annual Conference of
the Arab Forum for Environment and Development (AFED)

PR 33/2008 October 27, Manama, Bahrain
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A delegation from the Opec Fund for International Development (OFID) headed by Mr. Suleiman Al-Herbish, Director-General, attended the First Annual Conference of the Arab Forum for Environment and Development (AFED) held in Manama, Bahrain between October 27-28. During the Forum, Mr. Al-Herbish presented an opening statement on the forum’s first day followed by a detailed discussion on OFID’s activities during the Panel Session on Financing Environmental Programs: Private-Public Partnership on the event’s second day.

During the opening session, Mr. Al-Herbish highlighted OFID’s participation world-wide and within the Arab world. In addition, Mr. Al-Herbish focused on the Forum’s continuing discussions on the importance of development in the ongoing challenge of Environment protection as well as the academic inclusion of environmental consciousness within early education in increasing respect and responsibility towards the environment.

On the following day, Mr. Al-Herbish directed discussions towards the application of Sustainable Development in the poorest countries across the world. He questioned the definition of Sustainable Development as defined by the Brundtland Commission and stated that the matter of Sustainable Development fails to answer to future generations as it does not provide solutions to its challenges in current times. In addition, Mr. Al-Herbish continued to debate the importance of combating Energy Poverty with reference to the multitude of very poor people living in sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere around the globe. Mr. Al-Herbish went on to suggest that combating Energy Poverty should be included in the United Nation’s Eight Millennium Development Goals as the 9th goal. The topic of Energy Poverty became a central focus within this session in which many from the Forum’s participants and audience reiterated Mr. Al-Herbish’s concern towards eliminating the fundamental cause for the deterioration of the Environment within the poorest countries of the world. Mr. Al-Herbish also highlighted the allocation of a specific workshop in Abuja, Nigeria after the Riyadh declaration of the 3rd Opec Summit which concluded that the subject of Energy Poverty is the next challenge facing many issues within the poorest nations of the world specifically Sub-Saharan Africa.

He then went on to highlight the importance of the presence of political will to alleviate the problem of energy for the poor as exemplified by the initiative of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud during the Jeddah Forum which he recently hosted in June 22, 2008. “OFID is one of the many instruments which the King addresses in order to confront such a global problem” , Mr. Al-Herbish added. During the Jeddah Energy meeting, the King called upon the Ministerial Council of OFID to meet and consider the approval of a parallel program for the previous one with continual characteristic and proposed an allocation of US $1 billion for this program.

“We are pleased at OFID to be part of the Forum’s aim to increase awareness and target solutions for the struggle for a better environment within our future” said Mr. Al-Herbish. “OFID continues to provide much assistance in the aim of alleviating poverty which is at the core of all environmental and development problems across the world” he added.