Camille Nuamah calls on Albanian businesses and citizens to start changing their behaviors to do their part in fighting global warming.
TIRANA, Dec. 6 – Albania is already being adversely effected by the global climate changes, and things will get worse. But there is something Albanians can do – change their behavior to a more sustainable life, according Camille Nuamah, the World Banks’ country manager for Albania.
In an editorial published through her office’s Web site, Ms. Nuamah says weather patterns have already been observed over the last 15 years with increasing temperatures, decreasing precipitation, and more frequent extreme events like floods and droughts.
“Ask any small hydropower plant operator whether the snowfall has been less and less, and whether it melts earlier and faster, as the years go by. Projections indicate a decline in summer rainfalls of about 10 percent by 2020 and 20 percent by 2050,” she wrote. “These changes will have a direct impact on agriculture and energy production, and, as a result, everyone’s daily life. The simple fact is that products we buy, use and then discard carelessly into the environment consume our natural resources faster than they can be replenished by ecological functions of our planet.”
But Albania, Ms. Nuamah argues, has a huge untapped advantage – the current inefficiencies in the supply and use of water, energy and other resources can be reversed at a relatively low financial cost. “Such actions can help manage the impacts of climate change. But this will require each and every Albanian, not only the government or the private sector, to take responsibility for changing behaviors.”
Stemming from the fact that Albanians feld deprived under Communism, the are consuming more and more. The problem is the planet’s resources are being depleted at an unsustainable pace and Albania stands to suffer alongside the rest of the world.
So what can the average Albanian do? “There are many opportunities to make the critical difference in our personal lives,” Ms. Nuamah writes.
Using incandescent light bulbs instead of CFLs can reduce your consumption of electricity for lighting threefold. Installing solar water heaters, doubled glazed windows or thermal insulation can do much more.
“Electricity tariffs are going up because the cost of providing electricity is not only the cost of its production but the environmental cost of wasting electricity. Conserving will be both environmentally responsible and financially rewarding,” she said.
Albania’s water resources have little demand management and a lot of wastes, Albanians consume more than twice the European consumer in water each year. Water and irrigation tariffs are so low that little effort is made to conserve.
“Perhaps the most dangerous pattern is that of the new types of water, land and air pollution. Many people see open lots, river beds, country roads and beaches as unlimited sites for throwing trash and waste. But what looks, today, like an open lot may be, tomorrow, an un-useable site for that new school or health center that the community really needs,” she wrote. For sure, local and central government have their roles to play, but people only raise the future costs of clean-up, the future taxes or debt to pay for that clean up, by careless and short-sighted behavior today.”
