By Zahraa Al-Kathemi
KUWAIT, April 3 (KUNA) -- Kuwait''''s Environment Public Authority (EPA) has outlined the second ambitious strategy for environment protection in the coming years, announced Thursday Director of EPA''''s Research and Strategic Planning Office Huda Al-Munayes.
"The second national environment strategy would meet the aspirations and demands of Kuwaitis regarding environment preservation, pollution control, retaining natural resources, and achieving sustainable development," Al-Munayes told KUNA.
She revealed that the new strategy includes setting up integrated systems for environment reservation, air and water quality control, waste recycling, marine and land preservation, handling of hazardous chemicals and materials.
Al-Munayes pointed out that the long-term strategy identifies the required environment projects to materialize its goals as well as the required finance for each project and goal to be achieved.
She added that the new strategy envisions a series of new legislations to impose harsher penalties on air and water polluters and those harming the ecological system in the country.
Al-Munayes stated that the EPA will cooperate with relevant national, regional and international organizations to put the strategy in effect.
The EPA has recently developed highly sophisticated systems to monitor and analyze environment data, Al-Munayes said, referring to the Environmental Monitoring Information System of Kuwait (eMISK).
The eMISK is initiated by EPA with aims to establish, build and maintain a comprehensive geo-environmental database of Kuwait along with an enterprise level GIS system for access, update and analysis of the environmental data.
The GIS is a geographic information system integrates hardware, software, and data for capturing, managing, analyzing, and displaying all forms of geographically referenced information.
GIS allows users to view, understand, question, interpret, and visualize data in many ways that reveal relationships, patterns, and trends in the form of maps, globes, reports, and charts. A GIS helps answer questions and solve problems by looking at the data in a way that is quickly understood and easily shared. GIS technology can be integrated into any enterprise information system framework. (end) zak.nfa.ibi