Summary of Umm El Fahm Meeting

Summary of Umm El Fahm Meeting

Environmental Justice in Urban Space

The third gathering (out of five) of the Environmental Justice Committee in 2007, took place in Umm El Fahm in early May, in cooperation with the local Municipality and the Northern Triangle Environmental Unit.

The Committee considers the model of its meetings to produce the most suitable framework of discussion to create a regional planning debate, generating a process of public participation and forming an integrated environmental-social-planning policy based on values of environmental justice and sustainability.

This latest meeting studied the focal issue of the committee's activities in 2007, environmental justice in urban space, as it is played out in Umm El Fahm and localities in the region. The area experiences many environmental and social problems: aged infrastructure; no central sewerage system; insufficient employment opportunities; specific tourist enterprise developments without overall planning; lacking transportation accessibility; exclusion from decision making processes etc.

Umm El Fahm Mayor, Mr. Hashem Abd ElRahman, spoke in his opening remarks of the need to formulate a "regional language" for the planning of the area, considerate of the needs of the population, and his hope that the meeting will 'signal' national level decision makers with regard to the desirable way of work.

Viable planning solutions were presented, as a possible model for cooperation in a multiple-conflict geographical space (national, agricultural-urban, tourist development vs. traditional lifestyle, periphery-center and more). Some examples included: land exchange between neighboring Megiddo Regional Council and the municipality of Umm El Fahm, and establishing a joint sewage purification plant to the seven local authorities in Wadi Ara and the Menashe Regional Council due to the flow of Umm El Fahm sewage to agricultural fields.

Ms. Kaukab Younes, director of a women's association in Ar'ara working to promote children in the Northern Triangle Region, stressed the importance of environmental education from an early age and its contribution to active involvement of the children and their families. Findings of research on accessibility and transportational mobility as key to economic independence among women in the Arab sector was presented by Tamar Keynan, advisor to Kayan, a feminist Arab women's organization.

The committee was pleased to note that the Municipality of Umm El Fahm General Director, Mr. Taufik Karman, who actively participated in the organization of the meeting, expressed his commitment to promote the issues raised. Consequent to this gathering, a Knesset meeting was scheduled to discuss the mobility of women in the Arab sector in mid June.

The committee intends to continue leading the issue of environmental justice in urban space in two additional strategic meetings, planned to take place in New Haredi (Ultra-Orthodox) town of El’ad during August and in Tel Aviv-Jaffa by the end of the year. The Tel Aviv meeting will present municipal policies for public participation in planning in anticipation of the 2008 municipal elections. Enclosed please find pictures of the meeting.