AFED launches online environmental reference portal in Arabic

The domain includes a full archive of the magazine contents during the past 17 years.

The new website will be updated daily with news, information and commentaries written by leading analysts and experts, including Mostafa Kamal Tolba, Farouk El-Baz, Mohamed El-Ashry, Khaled Irani, Mathis Wackernagel, Ashok Khosla and Najib Saab.

The domain's name www.afedmag.com (AFED magazine) reflects a new epoch of the magazine, which was founded in 1996 by Najib Saab.

It became an organ of AFED after Saab turned it over to the pan-Arab organization at its Board meeting in Beirut in November 2012. Al-Bia Wal-Tanmia magazine was behind establishing AFED in 2006, which was hosted at its premises during its first years.

The new portal allows searching under composite titles and in correlative manner, such as 'air pollution in Kuwait' or "Lebanon forests", through search engines available on the site. While only selections from the last three issues will be available on the website, full contents of all previous issues of the magazine are made available for browsing.

In addition to the Arabic main website, an English section is available, containing selections from the contents and a search engine for research and translation to transfer selected topics from Arabic to English.

AFED and Al-Bia Wal-Tanmia had launched earlier this year an environmental education website under the domain name afed-ecoschool.org, in addition to various pages on social networks.

AFED's Secretary General Najib Saab said, "The upgrade and modernization drive were necessary 'to address a new generation of young Arabs in their own contemporary language and methods',adding that the launch of the website coincides with an update to the print edition of the magazine, to further echo a youthful spirit in form and content."