The implementation of the monorail project in the holy sites would help withdraw 25,000 buses from a total of 70,000 used by domestic pilgrims as well as pilgrims who come by land from neighboring countries.

Efforts are under way to establish five monorails linking Makkah, Mina, Arafat and Muzdalifah at a total cost of SR20 billion in order to facilitate travel of more than three million Haj pilgrims between the holy sites. According to Dr. Habeeb Zain Al-Abidine, Saudi Arabia’s deputy minister of municipal and rural affairs, King Abdullah has given his approval to completing a feasibility study on the project.
He told Arabnews.com that the project is designed to transport five million pilgrims, adding that the ministry was conducting the study with the support of Saudi and foreign experts. He estimated the cost of a single monorail at SR4 billion.
Zain Al-Abidine called for implementing the project without further delay, adding that it would help organize the flow of pilgrims to the Jamrat and then to the Grand Mosque in Makkah.
Monorails offer quick, safe and environment-friendly transportation. “Many developing countries have overtaken us in the use of this facility,“ he said. “In the first phase, it could be used for domestic pilgrims as well as those pilgrims who come by land from foreign countries.“
Monorail, which is a single rail serving as the track for a wheeled or (magnetically) levitating vehicle, has been rapidly paving its way as a modern urban transit system, providing the most-sought-after transportation solutions for a built-up congested city. They are proving to be a more effective and viable solution to rapid urbanization due to numerous advantages.
Zain Al-Abidine said the implementation of the project in the holy sites would help withdraw 25,000 buses from a total of 70,000 used by domestic pilgrims as well as pilgrims who come by land from neighboring countries.
He said the system would help transport at least 500,000 pilgrims within six to eight hours. “It will solve many problems facing the transportation of pilgrims between the holy sites as a result of overcrowding,“ he added.
At present many pilgrims traveling in buses reach Arafat and Muzdalifah very late because of traffic congestion, the minister said, adding that monorails would reduce pressure on roads in the holy sites.
“Once this system is found successful, it will be applied on a wider scale in the holy sites, in Makkah and in other parts of the country,“ the minister said.
The monorail system is expected to make annual revenues of SR200 million by transporting some one million Haj pilgrims at a cost of SR200 per pilgrim and an additional SR150 million from services to Umrah pilgrims charging SR50 per pilgrim, he said. According to the present study, monorails will have a station west of the stoning area in Mina in order to transport pilgrims to the second and fourth levels of the high-tech Jamrat Bridge.
The second monorail will be established two to three years after the construction of the first one, the study said. It will be established in the middle of Mina for the use of mostly Arab pilgrims. The third monorail will be set up in the north of the holy sites. Some international monorail companies have proposed the use of double-decker trains.
The government has already embarked on an SR20 billion project to link Makkah and Madinah by a railway system. The project aims to provide a safe, fast, and comfortable mode of transport for an estimated 10 million Umrah and Haj pilgrims traveling between the two holy cities and Jeddah. The project will be implemented on a design, build, operate and transfer (DBOT) basis.
More than 2.5 million pilgrims are expected to perform Haj this year. According to a report issued by the Central Haj Committee, 1.2 million pilgrims have arrived in the Kingdom so far for this year’s Haj, which is scheduled to start on December 18.
Saudi missions abroad have issued more than 1.58 million Haj visas this year, according to Ibrahim Al-Kharashi, undersecretary for consular affairs at the Foreign Ministry. Indonesians have received the largest number of visas--214,886--while Argentina has received the least--15.
The number of pilgrims coming from China has exceeded 10,000 for the first time this year, he said.
The ministry has sent officials to Kyrgyztan, Benin, Macedonia, Togo, Tajikistan, Mauritius, Gambia, Comoro Islands, Mayotte Island and other remote areas in order to issue Haj visas.

Demonstrators took to the streets on Saturday to press world leaders to act over climate change, in an internationally coordinated protest marking the UN environment conference in Bali.

As a major United Nations ’framework convention’ on climate change (UNFCCC) crossed into its second half on Monday, the official view is one of optimism that progress has been made in laying the building blocks for a future agreement.
But others say the discussions are hopelessly deadlocked and that proposals could fall far short of the drastic emission cuts required to curb global warming.
Speaking at a press briefing at the end of the first of two weeks of negotiations, UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer said the conference needed to do two things: “First of all, it needs to deliver on a number of ongoing issues that are of particular importance to developing countries. For example, we need to advance on the question of adaptation, we need to advance on technology transfer, we need to strengthen capacity-building and we need to move forward on the issue of reducing emissions from deforestation. And secondly, it needs to launch a process on climate change action beyond 2012 when the first commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol ends.“
No final deal on a future climate regime will be concluded on the famed Indonesian island resort. The goal is merely to launch negotiations, to set an agenda on the main building blocks of a future agreement and to set an end date for conclusion of the negotiations.
According to de Boer, three divergent views have arisen. Some countries wanted legally binding targets for developing countries. Others said developing countries could limit growth in emissions provided incentives are put in place. Another major discussion centered on whether industrialized countries should accept legally binding targets or national-level targets.
“There’s good progress in the future-oriented discussion on three of the four building blocks: good progress has been made on mitigation, adaptation and technology,“ added Boer. He pointed out that the fact that there has been less progress on finance did not mean the issue was difficult but simply points to the fact there hasn’t been enough time to discuss that issue yet.
De Boer said he had observed a strong willingness on the part of countries to get a successful outcome from Bali.
But Malaysia’s leading environmentalist Gurmit Singh, when contacted in Bali, had a different assessment. “They always give a rosy picture,“ he told Ipsnews.net in a telephone interview. “I think the discussions are still deadlocked because no unanimous position has emerged.“
Much of the debate centers on technology transfer, he said. “Larger developing nations such as China, India and Brazil are holding back. They want developed nations to show they are actually reducing emissions.“
The problem is that the developed countries say they will wait because the Kyoto Protocol only commits industrialized countries to legally binding reductions in greenhouse gas (GhG) emissions between 2008 and 2012.
In the meantime, emissions from countries such as China, India and Brazil--and even Malaysia--have been increasing, says Gurmit, the executive director of the Centre for Environment, Technology and Development Malaysia (Cetdem).
For instance, the UN Development Report indicates carbon emissions soared by 221 per cent from 1990 to 2004 in Malaysia--the fastest growth rate among the world’s top 30 carbon dioxide emitters.
Malaysia’s largest conglomerate, Sime Darby, which is mainly involved in the oil palm, property, energy and motor vehicle sectors, has adopted the tagline ’Developing Sustainable Futures’ and says it is going green as concern mounts over the levels of deforestation caused by the drive towards bio-fuels.
Budget airlines in South-east Asia, on the other hand, are rapidly expanding their services across the region, oblivious to the emissions they are causing.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) has forecast a rise in global energy demand of 50 percent by 2030. Much of this will come from rapidly growing economies such as China and India. If no climate policy is put in place, it could lead to a 50 per cent increase in greenhouse gas emissions
Earlier this year, the parties to the Kyoto Protocol agreed to a range of 25-40 percent emission reduction targets by 2020. De Boer said these targets would be an important reference frame for these discussions.
The big political question, says Gurmit, is how to ask developing countries to reduce emissions when they are not being given the technology transfer and financial aid promised in the UNFCCC, to which even the United States is bound because it has ratified the convention.

Multinational corporations are waking up to the fact that being “green“ is not just for environmentalists. That was the message that came out of a Green Banking event recently at the Tate Modern in London, where two leading UK companies, British Telecom (BT) and HSBC, outlined how they were incorporating environmental sustainability within their everyday business processes.
According to Reuters, BT said it had reduced its carbon footprint by 60 percent since 1996, setting itself a target of 80 percent reductions by 2016. It had achieved these reductions by procuring renewable energy, by direct energy efficiency improvements and by business process and behavioral change, such as reducing executive air travel by using tele- and video conferencing and telecommuting.
Fran�ois Barrault, CEO, BT Global Services, said that by supporting sustainability his company hoped not only to reduce its carbon footprint but also to attract younger people who prefer to work for environmentally and socially responsible companies.
He didn’t always think that way, though. Barrault said that when he first met former US vice president and environmental activist Al Gore, who showed him pictures of icecaps melting, he thought Gore was crazy.
A number of factors have convinced big business to go green, including the need to reduce the risk to business from the rising cost of oil and other energy prices. One of the biggest motivators is reputational risk, with a number of banks being targeted by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) for financing projects that are environmentally or socially damaging. Banks also see the green agenda as an opportunity to win new business.
“Ten years ago you would not have seen environmental and social issues as part of our risk toolkit,“ says Jon Williams, head of group sustainable development at HSBC, which claims to be the world’s first carbon-neutral bank. “Environmental and social issues are not just about risk management but also commercial business opportunities,“ he says.
A typical challenge major users of IT face is greening data centers, which consume vast amounts of electricity. Some estimates suggest a single UK data center uses more power than a city of 280,000 people.
Data center specialist Migration Solutions says firms need to be creative in managing their data centers’ power consumption--and switch servers off if they don’t really need them.

Third-quarter earnings releases by UK telecom giant Vodafone Group and by Switzerland-based Holcim, the world’s second-largest cement maker, reflected growing contributions from India’s increasingly assertive domestic market on the earnings statements of global corporations.
Holcim reported that it had spent 2.6 billion Swiss francs on acquisitions in India alone to counter the weakening housing market in the United States. The company cited India’s annual core infrastructure spending of $40 billion and the fact that this number is likely to double as a major growth factor.
According to AP, Vodafone said that, largely due to strong performance in countries such as India, it managed to cut losses. Vodafone has spent $10.7 billion on acquisitions in India to counter slowing growth in Europe. Vodafone adds 1.6 million new customers in India every month and has a subscriber base of 35 million. Revenues from its Indian operations grew by 53 percent for the quarter.
India is contributing not only to global corporate earnings but also to global computing power. India’s highly respected conglomerate the Tata Group has developed the fastest supercomputer in Asia.
The Top 500 supercomputer list announced at the International Conference for High Performance Computing made the announcement that the Tata computer, with a capacity to do 117.9 trillion calculations per second, is now the world’s fourth-fastest supercomputer. The Top 500 list has eight other supercomputers developed in India.
India’s economic growth has pushed the government to promise to double the country’s power output to 210,000 megawatts by 2012 and to move to more sustainable power sources.
Until now, coal-fired plants have dominated power production. Under the new plan, the contribution from hydroelectricity will grow sharply. The National Hydroelectric Power Corporation (NHPC) has announced that it is working on 13 projects that will establish 5,600 MW by 2012.
In addition it has completed detailed feasibility studies on setting up another 7,750 MW.