Prof. Ahmed Yehia Rashed: The Alternative Scenario: Revisit the FISC Conference Proceedings

When the Green Sustainable Future was/still a Chance/s 2010 -2110

Why the First International Conference

of Sustainability and the Future is titled:

Future Intermediate Sustainable Cities:

A Message to Future Generations ? (1)

1- Introduction

Prospective Studies and the future of Egypt isn’t just a theory.

It is the responsibility of current generation to think and work hard towards enabling future generations to achieve their own objectives.

Over the years a variety of national projects have been started with optimistic expectations and ended up with limited results or frustrations.

It is noteworthy that Egypt has lots of potentials based on its civilization and its human resources.

However, these potentials should be utilised in an innovative and efficient way to reduce or eliminate waste of time, cost and effort.

Our approach to achieve a better future for Egypt should be accomplished through the appropriate utilization of resources to implement a modern and well-organized plan based on the cooperation between all sectors in the country, having a main target of achieving a developed country based on sustainable strategies.

The vision of the respectful scientist Farouk El-Baz, and the proposal of “Developmental Corridor” emerged as a developmental ideology which looked at the Western Desert as a site, and at science and youth as a way to achieve the goal.

Previously, “Toshka project” was a national project for which the government capacities were enhanced to be active.

The questions raised are: during desert invasion and making new settlements in the desert, what are investment opportunities and how they will be invested?

Will heading towards the desert result in a better future for Egypt??

Or those visions and steps will drain current and future potentials. How about the scientific and practical studies used in the process of decision making, were they realistic?

Are these decisions and steps coping with the rates and speed of change, the stage of globalization, and consequently its economic, social and political changes?

Regardless of the controversy between the conservative and devout, and pros and cons, the question arises: Could Egypt grow in the old valley alone leaving 95% of the area pending?

And what would happen after a quarter-century without heading towards the desert?

The answer is that Egypt may have the time to ask, and as time passes, there will be no room for question, meanwhile desert will be a necessity for the future of tomorrow, and it won’t just be perceived as new land to be added to the globe or a renaissance project that accommodates various fields of productive and service activities or a tool to restore balance to the map of Egypt from the urban population and economic point of view.

In addition, a row vast space for construction, management, and investment according to new rules with unrestricted spatial chains.

This should be achieved through modern technology and the support of a rapidly growing visions and ideas coupled with the inspiration of the inherent cultural features.

Accordingly heading towards the desert and the future of Egypt could not be left to the forces of spontaneous or historical coincidences, with the emphasis that the thought of the old valley with its problems doesn’t suit the future of the new society.

Also, if the Egyptian architect play his/her role in formulating the future of Egypt, others will be in charge of this task, but with a major difference, which is charting the future of Egypt according to their interests, and because we live today on the legacy of parents and grandparents, it is our responsibility to examine what can our children and grandchildren inherit from us.

The architect’s responsibility is a must at this stage, and he/she cannot abdicate his role and his leadership in creating future Egypt within the challenges of sustainability. Finally, all raised issues have the similarity not only in the Middle East but all over the World and the International conference will be an opportunity platform to share and learn.

2- Hypotheses:

• The need for futuristic visions and Programmemes combining the present and future of Egypt that would provide practical scenarios rather than setting unreachable plans.

• Prediction in the midst of regional and global variables as well as scientific revolutions is very difficult. Studies of the future depend on the thought (the survival of the fastest) which means who is the first to reach scientific and technological applications that would change the face of the world.

• The issue of population and resources is a strategic issue to be considered in the long term, and therefore getting out from the 5% of the Nile Valley and spreading to other areas either the Developmental Corridor or Toshka is a major development of resources.

• The desert and Egypt of the future need a construction, not only new in its version, but also new in its philosophy of development.

• The responsibility of the architect/engineer stems from his message of reconstructing the land, and the attempt to change the future and sustainability of the development of Egypt of tomorrow through work and out of equal competition so that self building and implanting moral and ideological values and self education of the items of sustainable environment could be achieved concurrently with technical components.

• Ethical, religious, artistic and architectural values of the heritage of ancient environments and what they contain of ideas, solutions and lifestyle compatible with the environment and not the desire to return to the past is the justification for deducting a futuristic architectural way of thinking of a sustainable development.

• Dialogue and studies that discuss issues of reconstructing the future of Egypt and the future of today’s children, men and women of tomorrow, will not bring any new ideas through the traditional routine and therefore the emergence of new ideas that may be in some cases non-stereotypical is essential.

This BUE Event (the International conference and International competitions) is kind of provoking dialogue between generations and identities (scientists, officials, researchers, practitioners, , university students and school students).

3- The Problem: Invading or settling in the desert

The ironic note that the ratio of the population of the Egyptian desert to the total population of Egypt is the same percentage as the Nile Valley area to the total area of Egypt helped in promoting the idea of invading the desert.

Gamal Hamdan, in his book “Egypt Personality” a study of the genius of the place” about the invasion of the desert says:

” It is not easy, however, to invade the desert, because it is not a geographical or cultural picnic, but it is a struggle against nature and a real battle against the element.

The process may take the risk failures and setbacks as much as possibilities of success.

It is regrettable that the first three attempts to reclaim and reconstruct desert lands in the last two or three decades (this meant 1950s, 1960s and 1970s of the past century), whether on the edge of the valley itself or in the oases, Al-Natroun Valley and they are the project of El-Tahrir Directorate, and the New Valley.

They stumbled by varying degrees, and got many losses and did not achieve the desired or remarkable success.”
The research here refers to the development of the desert as the invasion of the desert.

This term was also found in many of the scientific and cultural circles, and in this regard the research point out that we have to change the concepts of developing the desert as well as the requirements necessary for this development.

Therefore, the research found that it’s necessary for us to change the operative word if the goal is to change the requirements of its significance.

As the word invasion origin is (invaders), which means that the settlement is illegal with reparation of force and coercion.

The aim of invading a place is to deplete the resources and potential wealth in the desert, whether agricultural or mineral depending on a limited source of water and eventually leaving the place once the stock and resources are depleted.

It is noticed that in Islamic history, the word Conquest was used instead of Invasion because the goal was not only to reconstruct the land, but also this reconstruction should be sustainable.

Therefore, the actual meaning and significance of moving towards the desert is to develop and sustain it through making settlements and social communities.

After all, the old word (Conquest) enhances the concept of sustainable development and the deliberate settlement and the way of dealing with the desert environment from the perspective of coexistence, and not based on the ideology of invasion that will neglect any sustainable aspect.

Changing the way of thinking will have a direct impact on the way we deal with the desert resulting in a developed sustainable second Egypt.

4- The Desert and the Strategic Environmental Assessment

“Strategic Environmental Assessment” (SEA) can be defined as the process of a preliminary environmental assessment of the general objectives of the development related to major projects in the stage of setting Policies, Plans and Programmes(PPPs) of these projects so as to ensure the environmental feasibility of these policies, plans and Programmes.

The research finds that to achieve a kind of developmental integration on the national, regional and local levels for settling in the desert from the environmental perspective there should be a “Strategic Environmental Assessment” to be the first steps to change the concept of the desert invasion to become desert development, and then laying the foundations and the basic principles of the desert development which is considered as an initial phase of decision making, completed by the Environmental Impact Assessment of the projects (EIA) which comes in later stages to ensure the integration of projects at various levels and the sustainability of the aimed development.

Here, we must point out the four elements concerned with the raised environmental issue about settling in the desert: firstly, the population and what is related to this element regarding spatial issues, water, energy, food and other requirements.

Secondly: the technical contents such as the food production techniques, disposal of waste, industry, energy and other methods of coexistence with the environment and affecting it.

Thirdly: consumption; which is the ability of all parties to participate in the environmental benefit of the resources available which include water resources, agricultural lands, riches mineral and even the air itself.

Fourthly and lastly: sustainability and networking which is the ability to build systems of land use and to exploit the riches that would attain environmental balance without draining them .

Therefore, the objective of assessing the environmental strategy is to make an attempt to ensure the sustainability of the aimed development and perform comprehensive studies of all aspects of desert development.

There is no doubt that the availability of information and different studies and the use of satellite images and geographic information systems (GIS) is the central axis and the cornerstone of the success of the presumed objectives of the “Strategic Environmental Assessment”, in order to support the decision makers to take the right decisions.

This may require rearranging and making comprehensive regulation for all institutions and bodies concerned with these studies, as well as to renew and reconcile all laws and legislation governing these fields.

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