By Mahmoud Bakr As countries introduce non-tariff restrictions to protect their markets, environmental requirements are increasingly prevalent, especially in Europe. This could be a problem for Egyptian exports as environmental awareness in this country lags behind the standards being imposed. The question is whether or not that problem is being addressed. For his part, Maged George, minister of state for environmental affairs, feels confident that Egypt, with the national strategy for environmental standards in place, is already catching up. Acting in coordination with the Arab League, he says, the Ministry of Environment (MOE) is both providing guidelines and supervising their application; today clean production is not simply a health concern but, even more fundamentally, a development requirement, since Arab industries are now obliged to turn out environmentally-friendly products. As far as Egypt is concerned, the MOE has amended Law 4 for 1994 and is already enforcing it by, among other measures, monitoring hazardous waste. And Egypt is the first Arab country to introduce comprehensive standards, adopting the ISP 14000 system in, among other examples, the industrial complex of 10 Ramadan. The MOE, George insists, is doing the same thing all across Egypt: a project for containing industrial development, for example, is currently being implemented in collaboration with the World Bank, the Bank of Japan, the European Investment Bank and the French Development Agency. At $175 million, it will provide thousands of jobs and bring Egyptian products in line with international standards; indeed, the MOE has invested $35 million in environmental provisions for the textile, food, fertiliser, chemical and engineering industries. In the conviction that societal participation is an integral part of sustainable development, the ministry is also seeking help from the media to raise awareness, while supporting industries through the Environmental Commitment Office (ECO), a specialist body that provides small and medium-size projects with advise and technical help. In locations like Cairo, Alexandria, Kafr Al-Sheikh, Aswan, and Al-Mansoura, environmentalists are offering advise and organising overseas tours for industrialists; so far, with engineering officials touring South Africa and textiles producers visiting Romania, the programme has been a success. ECO's plan is to train and advise industrialists while raising awareness of the environment. According to Sherif El-Gabali, chairman of the Environmental Committee of the Egyptian Federation of Industries (EFI), industrialists, increasingly aware that environmental standards are necessary for export and profit, are seeing requirements in a new light. He explained that ECO was founded by the MOE and the EFI to encourage clean production with a view not only to a cleaner environment but to enhanced competition abroad. Thus plants in potentially polluting activities have adjusted to the stricter controls; industrialists are more and more sensitive to ECO awareness campaigns; and ECO, financially self- sufficient, is coordinating between foreign donors and the EFI. The more they meet international standards, the more Egyptian products can compete in world markets. Modernising products along those lines involves funding, technical advice and training. And in the light of the current shortage of trained workers, El-Gabali explains, ECO is organising courses inside plants and providing loans for environmental investment. For his part, ECO Acting Manager Ahmed Abdel-Moneim is aware of the shifts in the world market. While in the past importers required quality at a competitive price, now they require environmentally friendly products. To gain access to a foreign market, a producer must clear three sets of regulations: the laws of the countries involved; the international agreements; and the individual requirements of the trade partner in question. Implicitly, trade partners must have sufficient knowledge of the policies in question; and ECO is active in this process, communicating with domestic exporters as well as the business community abroad and facilitating the flow of information. Besides which, Abdel-Moneim concluded, Egypt is seeking help from friendly countries like Denmark, which offered $12 million in aid of environmental programmes in Egypt, thus helping ECO.
