Environmental Experts Discuss Bali Climate Change

Left to right: Yousef Naddaf and Vahakn Kabakian

The purpose of the two-week Bali Climate Change Meeting that was held in December was to reach a new international agreement on monitoring pollution-related climate change. The event, hosted by the government of Indonesia, brought together more than 10,000 participants, including representatives of over 180 countries along with observers from intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations and the media.

One month later, Vahakn Kabakian and Youssef Naddaf, environmental experts who attended the meeting, came to AUB to discuss their experience and examine its global and regional implications. Hosted by the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs, they gave a joint lecture on the issue, on January 14 sponsored by the AUB Faculty of Health Sciences, in cooperation with the Lebanese Ministry of Environment and the United Nations Development Program.

Naddaf, who is an environmental specialist working at the Lebanese Ministry of Environment, spoke about the Kyoto protocol, which largely characterizes climate change agreements. This protocol, he said, is an international and legally binding agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. It came into force in February 2005, after it was agreed upon at a 1997 UN conference in Kyoto, Japan.

Kabakian, an environmental expert working in the United Nations Development Program in the Ministry of Environment in Beirut, delineated the main issues tackled at the Bali meeting. Kabakian concluded that the Bali Road Map, which charts the course for a new negotiating process to be achieved by 2009 and ultimately to lead to an international agreement on climate change, has yet "to overcome the hurdles created by the refusal of the major industrial countries to really cooperate."

Kabakian graduated from AUB in 2000 with a bachelor's degree in environmental health. In 2001, he received his master's in environmental technology with distinction at the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences in the University of Greenwich. He is currently the Lebanese Ministry of Environment's project manager on climate change.

Naddaf earned his bachelor's in public health from the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Balamand in 2002. He received his master's in environment and development at the London School of Economics and Political Sciences in 2004. He was a recipient of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office scholarship in 2003 and is currently working as an environmental specialist at the Lebanese Ministry of Environment.