Background: Geoscope Environmental Laboratories is a family business that was established in 2006 as the first Black-Owned State-Certified Environmental Laboratory in the United States. Co-owners Negede Gedamu and Alemnesh Abebe have dedicated the past 30 years of their lives in monitoring and researching agricultural and environmental issues in rural America. Over the past 30 years they have monitored and advised rural Maryland's sustainable development in the areas of water quality and resource management. They have engineered and sustained technological advancements in these fields that have come out of communities that had extremely low tax bases and therefore needed to evolve more cost effective methods of providing clean water and sanitation to their growing populations. As the program manager for Geoscope environmental Laboratories, I have worked to merge my experience in international sustainable development with their specialized expertise in environmental technologies. This merge culminated in our program with the United Nations Association entitled "Water Quality & Sanitation Standards Needed to Sustain Booming Tourism."

We presented technological advancements in water quality and sanitation that are both cost effective and easily maintained and are imperative to Ethiopia's ability to sustain revenues generated from tourism. In the company of National and International Agencies like FAO, WHO, IMF, USAID, Deloitte, EPA, and many others, I and the Washington Representative from the United Nations Habitat presented recommended methods and technologies that could be easily implemented in Ethiopia in order to increase access to clean water and improved sanitation systems.

The event went well, minus certain Egyptian special interest lobbyists who vehemently apposed any methods that may increase water consumption in Ethiopia because "anyone who supports growth in Ethiopia that increases water consumption, by expanding it's tourism industry or otherwise, is undermining the legislation that have been responsible for putting the majority of African governments in power. African's need to respect law.

Luckily, the moderator and the discussant for this event were very tactful in their ability to keep her disruptions to a minimum, however the reporter saw it rightfully interesting that Egyptian Lobbyists would see fit to attend such a progressive and productive event.

Event: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xE6aCARfrp4

Yodit Negede is Program Manager at Geoscope Environmental Laboratories and can be reached by email: ynegede@geoscopelabs.com

"Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to triumph."