US embassy cable - 05AMMAN1649

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 AMMAN 001649 
 
SIPDIS 
 
STATE FOR NEA/PPD 
STATE ALSO FOR OES/PCI/Ellen Shaw 
STATE PASS USAID/ANE/John Wilson 
INTERIOR FOR International/Washburne 
INTERIOR FOR USGS/International 
COMMERCE FOR NOAA/International/Ware-Harris 
 
SENSITIVE 
 
TAGS: SENV, ETRD, KPAO, TBIO, KHIV, SOCI, JO, XF 
SUBJECT: NEA ESTH Conference Links ESTH To Full Range of 
Diplomatic Goals, Skills 
 
1. (SBU) Summary: Thirty-eight officers from a range of U.S. 
departments and NEA missions met in Wadi Mousa, Jordan 
February 2-3 for a workshop to discuss U.S. environment, 
science, technology and health (ESTH) priorities in the 
region.  The workshop provided an opportunity for 
participants to explore the role of ESTH issues in advancing 
USG goals for sustainable development, economic and 
political stability.  The event also boosted participants' 
understanding of the USG's ESTH priorities, provided success 
stories and lessons learned, promoted State-USAID 
cooperation, and provided a forum for dialogue between 
Washington and the field, and networking among NEA posts. 
End summary. 
 
2.  OES PDAS Bud Rock and EPA Assistant Administrator Judith 
Ayres co-chaired a February 2-3 workshop of Embassy and 
USAID Mission representatives from 10 countries in the NEA 
region and five USG agencies.  The goals were to acquaint 
the participants with key ESTH issues in the region and to 
provide practical "tools of the trade" to effectively 
advance USG ESTH priorities.  Several overriding themes 
emerged: 
 
- ESTH work promotes USG goals across the board.  This 
includes political goals such as good governance and civil 
society, economic goals such as free markets and trade, and 
development goals including health.  Even non-traditional 
partners such as the military often have an interest in ESTH 
issues. 
 
- ESTH efforts and the broad context of sustainable 
development are people-oriented and play an important role 
in helping to improve the quality of life at home and 
abroad. 
 
- USG employees engaged in ESTH work need the full range of 
diplomatic skills to understand the issues, report on them 
and build the partnerships to address them. 
 
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Knowing the Issues and the Players 
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3.  One focal point of the conference was to educate the 
participants on ESTH issues and the USG bureaus that work on 
those issues so that officers and FSNs can tap the knowledge 
and resources of the appropriate bureaus when necessary. 
Overseas counterparts are often interested in how the United 
States deals with particular issues.  This means USG 
employees working on ESTH issues overseas need to be 
familiar with the U.S. domestic context and to be able to 
find out more about it.  At the conference, due to the 
presence of experts from these agencies, special attention 
was paid to strengthening ties between State, USAID, EPA, 
USDA and the Department of Interior.  But ESTH officers in 
the field were encouraged to tap USG expertise in any of the 
USG technical agencies.  The shift away from infrastructure 
towards a policy and legal framework for ESTH issues makes 
these intra-USG contacts crucial. 
 
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Telling America's Environmental Story Abroad 
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4.  Another focal area of the conference was linking ESTH 
issues and public diplomacy.  As part of the USG "Muslim 
World Outreach" initiative, State has been developing a 
component focusing on ESTH cooperation, which is useful for 
public outreach to NEA countries because U.S. scientific and 
technical expertise is held in high esteem throughout the 
Muslim world.  ESTH-related issues such as the tsunami are 
often at the center of public attention, and thus represent 
a public showcase for American expertise, values, policies 
and technology. 
 
5.  The United States has an environmental record second to 
none, and the public diplomacy "toolbox" has the information 
to back that up.  American environmental policy and actions 
include not only the government but also the private sector, 
NGO's, the international arena and grassroots volunteers. 
This makes it important to present the U.S. environmental 
situation in its full context, not just in its governmental 
aspects.  Please refer to http://infocentral.state.gov (USG 
only and password protected but unclassified) and 
http://usinfo.state.gov (public). 
 
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More to Climate Change Than Kyoto 
--------------------------------- 
6.  Participants in the workshop discussed climate change, 
an issue for which the U.S. has a good story to tell, 
despite the fact that the U.S. is frequently criticized for 
not ratifying the Kyoto Protocol. The USG has a large and 
wide-ranging commitment to climate change.  This includes 
USD5 billion spent on climate change science and policy in 
FY05, and programs such as the International Partnership for 
the Hydrogen Economy and the "Methane-to-Markets" program. 
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Health Issue Links ESTH, Development 
------------------------------------ 
7.  Health specialists from USAID/Amman and OES's Office of 
International Health Affairs led participants in a 
discussion of health issues.  While HIV/AIDS in the region 
has low prevalence, we need to work with host governments to 
keep it that way.  Maternal and mother-child health issues 
affect many people, and correlate with other ESTH issues 
such as access to clean water. 
 
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OES Committed to Supporting the Field 
------------------------------------- 
8.  OES PDAS Rock emphasized OES's commitment to supplying 
information that officers need in the field.  He mentioned 
OES's "Issue Briefs" intranet site (see "Issue Briefs" under 
http://oes.state.gov/) as a useful tool for field officers. 
That site provides brief, issue-by-issue summaries, points 
of contact for individual issues, and the top issues for 
each country.  The public diplomacy intranet and internet 
sites mentioned above are another useful source of 
information. 
 
9.  Participants in the conference discussion said it would 
be useful for them to have an OES cable "chron" and to have 
more effort in disseminating reports and information about 
USG-funded grants and projects in the region, in order to 
promote coordination.  Talking points or a vocabulary list 
in Arabic would save translation time in the field on 
technical demarches, said participants.  Rock said OES was 
open to comments from the field about what works and what 
doesn't, and what training is necessary. 
 
10.  Documents from the conference and other ESTH 
information are available through the NEA ESTH Hub web page 
at Embassy Amman's intranet site.  See: 
(http://10.194.1.7/env_hub/home.htm). 
 
HALE