Senior officials from the Ministries of Environment and the Environmental Enforcement Authorities in the Arab region met in Amman, Jordan, on 9-10 May 2007, to discuss opportunities for cooperation in the field of environmental governance in the Arab region. The participants, including representatives from Jordan, Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Oman, Yemen, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, shared experiences on developing and maintaining their respective compliance and enforcement programs and discussed the benefits of creating an Arab Enforcement Network.

Participants at the Networking Meeting also heard presentations from the Chair of the newly-formed Maghreb regional enforcement network, who discussed how the network had helped decision-makers better understand ways to protect Maghreb ’s natural resources, and from a participant of the European accession countries network, who discussed the power of regional networks to improve the implementation of environmental law. Observers from INECE, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA), and the United Nations Environment Program also shared their perspectives during the meeting.

Immediately prior to the Networking Meeting, INECE, the US EPA, the U.S. State Department’s Middle East Partnership Initiative, and the Ministry of Jordan hosted a capacity building program for inspectors and managers from the region. Twenty-eight participants from Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Yemen, Algeria, and Egypt attended the three-day “Conducting Environmental Compliance Inspections" course.

The U.S. EPA facilitators and participants shared best practices on inspection and documentation techniques for administrative and criminal violations for different industrial sectors. All of the training material were translated into Arabic, and were made available to the participants and others to assist with further training and skill development within their home countries.

See http://www.inece.org/mena/arabregion/ for presentations and additional information about the Regional Networking Meeting.