A business man in the Gaza Strip has found a lucrative way of satisfying the urge for KFC by smuggling it through underground tunnels. It may be four hours cold, with a side of soggy chips, but for Gazans it is a taste of freedom.
Just months after announcing that the ruinous scheme to construct a land and sea bridge between Saudi Arabia and Egypt is still on track, officials from both countries have jointly pledged to protect the Red Sea and its compromised ecological bounty.
When authorities discovered a lab full of marijuana plants in a bomb shelter beneath an all girls Orthodox Jewish school south of Tel Aviv, they proposed that outsiders must be responsible – because Haredim girls would never smoke pot, right?
James reviews a film about a very odd group of “environmentalists” in Berlin who use sex as a tool to save the planet.
The Lower Jordan River, the baptismal river of Jesus, has been dead at its source for some time. For the first time in ages, Israel is releasing native waters via a pump back to the historic waterway.
The irony here is clear: the first international LEED certified housing complex is built by an oil research facility in Saudi Arabia.
With Dubai’s government close to finalizing legislation, property owners in the Emirate may soon have the option to feed solar power into the grid so they can make money from feed-in tariffs.
They can’t read or write but a couple of brave Bedouin women from Jordan travelled far and wide to help their villages become solar powered.
Kuwaiti graphic designer Mohammad Sharaf serves up powerful pictures based on current events, salted with modern Middle Eastern humor and instantly provocative.
Tel Aviv’s Nir Meiri recently unveiled Marine Light – a curious lamp shade made entirely of seaweed wrapped around a spindly metal frame. Eaten by coastal people all over the world and prized for its gelatinous and nutritional properties (see bottled algae superfood), and its use is being investigated for seaweed as biofuel, marine algae is harvested [...]
Charles David Keeling began recording CO2 levels at Hawaii’s Mauna Loa Observatory in 1958, back when concentrations hovered at around 315 parts per million. Five decades later and that number has soared to 400ppm and his son told Yale Environment 360 we’re unlikely to stop it from rising any time soon.
The online ‘zine Foreign Policy posted its “worst countries for journalism” with the Middle East grabbing three of the Top Ten slots. As we scour the media, we already see how this fares for environmental reporting which is practically non-existent in the Middle East.
Ice hotels are fairly commonplace in northern countries where temperatures regularly fall below freezing, but that didn’t stop the Sharaf Group from opening an ice lounge in the middle of the desert.
Abdullah al-Shehi from the United Arab Emirates has shown his worth in environmental technology by patenting his sea-borne water collector that he hopes will help deliver clean water to desert regions across the Middle East and the world.
The nominees for the 2013 Aga Khan Award for Architecture were recently announced: 20 candidates – half hailing from the Middle East – all vying for a million dollar prize.
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) recently issued a report calling for wider uptake of insect for food and feed.
Climate change is one of the most urgent issues of our time, yet most countries in the Middle East and North Africa continue to subsidize energy derived from fossil fuels. Seeking solutions, The Guardian launched a three part Global Public Leaders Series and sent us this recent lecture by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
While the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Saudi Arabia have been outspoken about their shift to renewable energy to shore up for when oil supplies start to wane, Kuwait has largely remained in the shadows. Kuwait has the best solar irradiation along the Arabian Peninsula, which means they are well poised to bring solar energy on [...]
Tangram Gulf recently unveiled a naturally-cooled FIFA stadium design for the 2022 World Cup in Doha, Qatar.
Turkey’s largest wind power plant has broken ground and is expected to generate enough clean energy to electrify up to 170,000 homes.
The Middle East and North Africa have faced a number of hurdles in getting what experts believe could be the greatest solar power grid in the world off the ground. From Morocco to Egypt to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), obstacles have continued to stand in the way of creating a grand solar project. Until now.
My last photo blog on Green Prophet featured one of the many sites in the Hajar Mountains from which construction aggregate is extracted. This time I’m showing a different kind of mountain on the outskirts of Dubai. This is a landfill for building rubble.
Salima Naji has been recognized by the Aga Khan Development Network for her efforts to revive a series of earth buildings in the lesser Atlas Mountains, Morocco.
Oman is a small nation bordering Abu Dhabi on the Arabian peninsula; it has a long coastline and one of the largest populations of endangered Loggerhead turtles on earth. It also subsidizes energy and water, essentially arresting any kind of sustainable development. There’s no incentive to conserve something that comes for free – until now.
The only thing more abundant than sun in the Middle East and North Africa is sand. Used in the production of Markus Kayser’s 3D printer and to make Algerian building bricks, sand is useful for a host of applications – including lighting.
Hotter than heck and bone dry, the Middle East and North Africa have an abundance of sun, and leaders across the region are striving to make the most of it. Five North African countries and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan will receive a total of $660 million from the $7.6 billion Climate Investment Fund (CIF) [...]
Green Prophet interviews Dieter Moor, the CEO of ertex – a building integrated photovoltaic company which recently completed a roof-based system for the the Sheik Zayad Learning Center at the Al Ain Zoo.
Karin plucks mulberry leaves from her backyard and serves them to her family. Long ago, mulberry trees were planted all over the Middle East to feed silkworms. The cottage silk industries have died out, but many ancient mulberry trees remain. Strolling with Karin in her garden this week, I remarked that the big mulberry tree [...]
For the entire month of May, the French Institute Alliance Francaise (FIAF) is celebrating Tunisia in the aftermath of the Arab Spring and this weekend it’s souk time – in NYC’s upper east side. From May 8-10, a host of Tunisian crafts and food items will make their big city debut at the Tinker auditorium on [...]
Sporadic street violence, economic distress and political polarization were mostly put on ice this past Sunday as Egyptians of all classes and religions held picnics, took boat rides on the Nile and celebrated Sham el-Nessim, a holiday whose roots most believe date back to this land’s ancient inhabitants. The event features a stinky fish.
Dubai may not seem like the most likely place for a “miracle garden” but the first phase of the 721,000 square foot flowerfest was unveiled at Dubailand earlier this year.
The UK Green Investment Bank and the United Arab Emirates Masdar have inked a new agreement that will see the UAE-based company work toward new investment opportunities in the United Kingdom, taking their expertise in renewable energy to Britain.
A tiny collective of rural women at the southern tip of the Dead Sea in Safi is creating art that’s omni-sustainable. Since 1999, with catalytic infusions from a remarkable Canadian painter, this Jordanian sisterhood has been crafting unusual “eco” fabric items bespoke to their salty seaside village.
The food industry is anything but shaky around the world these days, from meat glue to horse meat in “beef” burgers. Who are we to trust? The latest scandal is fake olive found in Israel, including organic varieties. Watch out for it anywhere. We sum up where to buy, and what to avoid.
Bahrain is looking to overhaul its energy management system and announced this week that it was to implement a new “radical” IT system that would help boost energy efficiency in the Gulf Kingdom.
Ask yourself: if you lived in the deep desert, where the sand burns your soles at midday, would you run outside and play soccer? No sane person should. But Dick Sweeney has sent us thought-provoking images of soccer posts in extreme environments that reveal just how much Arabs love their football.
When “Biggest Loser” coach Orly Hoffman Bar approached Toledo-Lifschitz Architecture & Design with an idea to convert a vacant space north of Tel Aviv into a sweet new gym, she offered two major constraints: time and money.
A quiet little how-to book has been translated into Hebrew offering basic sex education to Israel’s Orthodox Jews.
Whether or not a 100,000 square meter office complex could possibly come with even a net environmental benefit is debatable, but the fact that a design wrapped in green won an international competition for such a complex signals a potential shift in Turkey’s urban planning.
Refrigeration is perhaps one of the greatest inventions of modern man, but it has come at a price. Not only do they require a great deal of energy to stay cool, but they also rely on ozone-depleting chloro-fluorocarbons (CFCs), or freon (though some countries have phased these out.) As an increasing number of people walk [...]