Executive Director’s Message
Active Executive Director’s Message | June 2022
On June 5th, 2022, QNRF, along with the world, celebrated World Environment Day (WED), the United Nations’ day for encouraging worldwide awareness and action to protect our environment. The theme for this year was aptly identified as “Only One Earth” drawing importance towards sustainable living in harmony with nature through consistent efforts by all of us to save the planet.
Through the vehicle of research, QNRF works to emphasize our individual and collective impact on the environment while underlining how to conserve our environment in the face of increasing human population growth and anthropogenic activities that degrade natural resources and ecosystems. Our research projects and outcomes highlight our contribution to Qatar’s environmental and sustainability development goals as outlined in QNV 2030 to increase citizens' awareness of their role in protecting the country's environment for their children and the nation's future generations; as well as the QRDI 2030 priority area of Resource Sustainability to support the sustainable management of Qatar’s environmental, food and water resources through research and technological solutions.
In honor of WED, this month’s newsletter will feature research and one of many researchers that have made a positive and successful impact in the field of environmental science.
In our Success Story, Dr. Radhouane Ben-Hamadou takes us through his team’s comprehensive assessment of the status of the coral reefs existing in Qatar’s marine environment and highlights the need for the combined restoration of degraded natural reefs and conservation of the biodiversity and productivity of artificial reefs as the way forward.
Our Spotlight On features one of QNRF’s very own: Qatar Research Leadership Program alum, Dr. Mousa Abuhelaiqa. His work in the field of material sciences focusing on alternative sources of energy, namely solar energy and perovskite solar cells, has shown potential for high performance and low production costs in solar cells/solar energy technology – an important alternative energy source.
In these successes, QNRF continues to contribute to our overall understanding and development of our nation’s environmental and sustainability development goals.
4127