EnviroCities 2010 conference concludes with a call to create greener cities

The two-day EnviroCities 2010 conference concluded on Monday at Intercontinental Hotel, Dubai Festival City with a call to spread the culture and awareness in the community on basic green building standards, and continue to develop green building laws in line with the continuing evolution of technology.

The conference organized by the Environmental Centre for Arab Towns (ECAT) in cooperation with Dubai Municipality, under the title, "Green Cities," saw the presentation of 15 work papers on different aspects of green cities by various experts in the field.

The conference also called for paying attention to effectively managing all aspects of life in the city and directing them towards sustainability, in addition to caring to transport the energy in the city buildings to the neighbourhood and at the same time, measure its impact on the city and make the environment green as part of the priorities and concerns of daily life. It also appealed to work on the development of systems used in transport to achieve the greatest possible degree of rationalization of energy consumption.  

Other recommendations include formulation of new laws with dimensions of contemporary reality, concerted efforts of various parties to promote mass transit as one of the items with the greatest impact on the urban environment, search for alternatives means of transport using environment-friendly energy sources, provide appropriate infrastructure to encourage walking or cycling, and establish a sustainable scientific research complex including scientists and researchers in the country aimed at achieving the construction of the green city. 

EnviroCities conference urges to work for zero carbon cities

The second day of EnviroCities 2010 conference saw the presentation of eight working papers on various topics related to green cities by regional and international experts in the field.

The first lecture on the second day was delivered by Matthew Plumbridge, consultant environmental and sustainability planning, Department of Municipal Affairs, Abu Dhabi. He talked about the Abu Dhabi experience in transforming towards Green City.

He said the integrated regulatory framework of Abu Dhabi Municipality include green building codes, which focuses on durability, ventilation, safety and quality. The frame work also includes energy code and fire code.

The second paper of the day called, “Sustainable Cities: Strategy, Elements and Indicators to Counterbalance Climate Change,” was presented by Prof. Mohsen Aboulnaga, Government Strategy & Policy Advisor and main founder of Emirates Green Building Council.

“The impact of Climate Change on our cities has been recently severely manifested in the floods in Pakistan, Philippines and Italy causing major landslides and destruction to nature and manmade environment, the blistering heat waves in Europe this summer, the major droughts, heat in Russia causing forest fire, and the Tsunami,” said Aboulnaga. 

However, he said, these natural disasters have triggered the alarm to think sustainability and the need to build eco-friendly cities.  

“Creating and designing cities is one of the most complex and sophisticated processes as they ultimately consume most natural resources, an awful amount of energy, and use huge quantities of water as well as produce air pollution and generate waste. These pose a huge risk to our health and environment, and ultimately contribute to climate change; a phenomenon that is of prime global concern,” Aboulnaga pointed out.

“Another crucial dimension impacting climate change is the gigantic rise in world population particularly, in urban areas and beyond,” he pointed out.

According to the United Nations 2009 report on water shortage, and keeping in mind the world’s high energy consumption rates, it is becoming assertive that strategy and policy, and its assessment tools in sustainable national planning should be firmly developed and exploited to put forward appropriate key performance indicators to encounter such great challenges and ensure our cities are sustainable,” said Aboulnaga.

“To curb green house gases emissions and reduce its impact on climate change, it is vital to efficiently plan our cities to be sustainable yet, to diligently develop strategy and policies that promote sustainability to the extent these cities are eco-friendly and maintained,” he said.

Narciso Zacarias, expert from Dubai Municipality presented his paper on cool green cities in which he talked about Dubai Aerial Thermal Survey.

He said that due to construction boom in the city of Dubai it is becoming densely populated and this led to temperature rise due to influence of hot and humid climate that experiences a pronounced Urban Heat Island (UHI).

The burden of the UHI can have significant impact on human health and thermal comfort consequences needing more energy consumption for cooling thus effecting urban air pollution, Zacarias pointed out.

“With Dubai Municipality's commitment to promote sustainable development, the Environment Department in association with Geographical Information System (GIS) launched the Dubai Aerial Thermal Survey study with a contract from COWI Gulf A/S in October 2009 to map thermal data of the city to understand the prevalence of UHI and to identify the objects being heated and emitting heat to the surroundings,” he said.

“The aerial collection of thermal data was made in the 1^st week December 2009 over the 600 sq. km area of urban environment. In relation to the aerial thermal mapping survey, COWI Gulf A/S measured the surface heat island by remote thermal sensors mounted to an aircraft with over 31,000 thermographs were captured during the flyover,” said Zacarias.

“Based on the thermal mapping data, the report provides an overview of the UHI phenomenon in Dubai. The report seeks to provide additional information pertaining to mitigation options and suggests overall interventions to be taken by Dubai Municipality and its city stakeholders,” he said.

“The report refers to best practices and additional thermal reading findings which can aid Dubai Municipality in its decision making and future plans on how to address the UHI phenomenon. Socio-economic and demographic data at the next stages of planning level will be used to quantify exposure to urban heat island magnitude among residents. It was inferred that future research should be focused on design and planning parameters for reducing the effects of urban heat island and ultimately living in a better environment,” said Zacarias.

Prof. Nabyl Chenaf, Associate Professor and Chair of the Departments of Architecture and Interior Design at the American University of Dubai presented his paper on “Green design at the inception stages-case of Ste. Maxime, France.”

He tried to show how “green” design at the urban scale can start very early at the inceptive stages and gave ideas on how resources can be used to their optimum and energy can be produced and used rationally, especially within the greater  matrix of design involving other considerations such as aesthetics, identity and social space.

Chenaf said green design is not a choice anymore as more and more people are aware of the danger of pollution and the waste of resources as well as the benefit from the respect of nature and use of renewable energy.

The presentation by Sougata Nandi of TECOM, titled “Lean to Green Lifestyles” explored the key elements of the low carbon lifestyle, its links to well-being, employee satisfaction and community cohesion, as well as strategies for planning, design, communication and enterprise development.  

Environment Minister announces Green Building rule implementation at federal level from next year

EnviroCities 2010 conference kicks off in Dubai

Dr. Rashid Bin Fahad, UAE Minister of Environment and Water said the Green Building rule will be implemented at the federal level from the beginning of next year in government projects in the first phase as the council of ministers had taken a decision in this regard in July.

He was speaking during the inauguration of the second international conference, EnviroCities 2010, under the title, "Green Cities," at Intercontinental Hotel, Dubai Festival City on Sunday in the presence of His Highness Sheikh Hamdan Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Deputy Ruler of Dubai, UAE Minister of Finance and Chairman of Dubai Municipality. The two-day conference is organised by the Environmental Centre for Arab Towns (ECAT) in cooperation with Dubai Municipality.

The opening ceremony was also attended by Denis Hayes, Earth Day Founder, Philip Jordan, Mayor of Phoenix, Eng. Hussain Nasser Lootah, Director General of Dubai Municipality, and a number of dignitaries and experts from various parts of the world in the field of environment.

Fahad also called for meeting the challenges of facing the negative impact of the fast paced urbanization in the world.

“We have always been keen to incorporate the environmental dimension in the developmental plans. Realizing the pressures of urban development boom, the UAE has given much importance to apply sustainable solutions including transforming the city areas into green, which in turn will reduce the impact of carbon emission and protect the environment,” he said.

Lootah, who delivered the speech on behalf of the patron of the event, Sheikh Hamdan, stressed the academic importance of the conference and the urgent need for the convening of such conferences, which examine the issue of green cities, which is one of the important topics because of its obvious implications for the system of ecological balance.

He spoke about the importance of the environment, the sustainable use of natural resources, and planning through the adoption of environmentally friendly solutions that are sustainable.

“The adoption of the Green Cities project will bring ecological balance in our cities of today,” Lootah said, emphasizing the concern for good government.

“Through the directives of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, UAE Vice-President and Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai we started the application of green building specifications on all buildings and facilities in the emirate according to the best global environment-friendly standards,” he said.

Lootah said the work on the manual on the terms and conditions of green buildings has been completed and efforts are underway to formulate the work mechanisms and its implementation.

He stressed that the EnviroCities conference is one of the important events in the Arab region, where scientists, experts and researchers in this area meet to discuss the latest achievements in this field.

Lootah hoped the conference will seek to create a network of cooperation among the global players in the field of environment and work to activate the role of local government councils in Arab cities to adopt modern concepts of environmental management to be friendly to the environment.

He told that the city looks through this conference to spread the benefits thanks to the experience and expertise that will be presented through the working papers and recommendations on the Arab cities for the same purpose.

Denis Hayes challenged the participants to design and construct a 10-story office building in each of their cities that produces as much energy from the sunshine that falls on it as it uses.

“Oil is a declining resource and sunlight will endure forever. Every country represented here has a hugely valuable solar resource that, with intelligent land use planning, you can employ in a distributed way inside your existing cities,” he said. 

Hayes also called for the creation of truly sustainable cities that will safeguard the human population while also serving to protect the natural world.

He said truly sustainable cities will promote education, creativity, community, productivity, and the frugal use of scarce resources.

He said the conference covers a wide spectrum of topics such as "Green City Goals, Policies, Indicators, Green City Branding," "Green Management of Land, Energy, Water and Wastes," "Green Future Cities/Zero Carbon Cities," "Green Building Codes," "Cool Green Cities - Urban Heat Islands, impacts and solutions," "Success Stories from Built Environment," "Green Transport," "Green Hotels," "Green Lifestyles" and "Green Economy."

The first session of the conference was addressed by Prof.  Spiro N. Pollalis of Harvard University, who talked about the "challenges in transitions to green cities,” followed by a presentation by Eng. Essa Al Maidour, Assistant Director General of Dubai Municipality for Engineering and Planning Sector, who gave details about "Green Building Codes in Dubai.

Maidour said the green building rule will be made mandatory for all buildings in Dubai after three years as it is a transitional stage.

But, he said, during the initial stages, the green building rule will be implemented on government buildings.

The other speakers of the day included," Andreas Georgoulias, also of Harvard University, who gave a lecture on "Clean Green Cities."

In session two of the inaugural day, Dr. Nawal Hosany from Masdar, talked on the subject, "Towards Zero Carbon Cities,” Naser Bu Shehab and Mohammed El Hashmi of RTA jointly presented a paper on "Green Mass Transport, Fuels, Metro/Hybrid," and Dr. Adam Cade of Sustainability Education Consultancy, Frankfurt, gave tips on the quality of life in Green cities during his lecture titled, "Lean to Green lifestyles."