Students from across the country who have excelled in environment protection will be honoured at the Namat Competition Awards Ceremony, in its fifth edition, to be held under the auspices of Dr Madeeha bint Ahmed al Shaibaniyah, Minister of Education (MoE), on October 31 at the Novotel Main Ballroom.
The annual Namat competition, titled 'Sustainability; A Way of Life', organised by Environment Society of Oman (ESO) in association with Ministry of Education and supported by Veolia Oman, an environmental management company, aims to bring out some of the awe-inspiring ideas that can change the way we live and add value to environment preservation for the generations to come.
Representatives from the winning schools will receive overall trophies besides awards and accolades, a spokesperson said. Earlier, the Namat awards saw children presenting ideas based on three broad categories, such as ‘Energy Management’, ‘Waste Management’ and ‘Water Management’ initiatives that saw an overwhelming participation from the students, which consisted mostly of girls supported by their teachers.
The themes of the Namat competition focused on the doctrine that water and energy are essential for life while economic growth partly requires harnessing the potential of ecosystems and therefore water and energy efficiency are essential. Also, water is a key determinant in all aspects of social, economic and environmental development and on the energy front, Oman is going through an energy transformation while focusing more on renewables.
Meanwhile, sound waste management is just as important as we need to collectively minimise and prevent waste to support in addressing the protection of the environment and the triple planetary crisis.
Reflecting an ever-increasing urge to participate in the productive contests, this year’s school teams will share even more creative ideas to solve their environmental issues, compared to last year’s entries, the sources said. Over the past few years, there has been a higher level of community engagement and more enthusiasm from the participating government schools and Namat has undoubtedly succeeded in instilling an environmental mindset and behaviour among the participants.
Environmental education is one of the main pillars to achieve environmental protection. Hence, educational policies need to focus on including environmental education concepts in the school curricula to enable everyone to take responsibility for the conservation and preservation of the environment.
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