Wearing full body clothing might not be the thing for everyone in the Middle East: but cover up the very young – especially those with light skin. Middle East sun exposure in the young leads to higher rates of skin cancer later in life. 

The new study by the Hebrew University in Jerusalem looked at extensive medical records of over one million Israeli adolescents before military service. They reveal how how exposure to the intense Israeli sun of young, light-skinned children increases substantially the risk of cutaneous melanoma – a serious form of skin cancer.

The incidence of cutaneous melanoma is on the rise in all parts of the world where light-skinned people live. Rates have tripled over the last decades in the United States, and the rise was even steeper in Europe.

What about in Israel? What segments of the population are more at risk and at what stage? Dr. Hagai Levine and Prof. Jeremy Kark set out to find the answers, using records of young Jewish males who were examined between 1967 and 2005.

These men were followed up by data linkage for cancer incidence until the end of 2006. Females were not included because their baseline data were available only for a more recent period.

In their study, the researchers found – not surprisingly – a quadrupled higher risk of skin cancer among native-born Israelis of European origin (including the Americas, Australia and South Africa) and those immigrating from those countries over those of North African or Asian origin.

Israel’s subtropical latitude means residents are exposed to more solar radiation than in much of Europe, and therefore the findings implicate childhood sun exposure as a clear, preventable risk factor for melanoma.

But even for those who spent their childhood in Europe, the data showed that those who came to Israel before age 10 had almost double the risk of cutaneous melanoma compared to those who arrived from Europe later in childhood.

The study of melanoma susceptibility according to countries of origin is especially suited to Israel because of the massive immigration that has taken place since the establishment of the state, bringing Jews of varying skin hues from Europe, North Africa and Western Asia.

The study on Israel and cutaneous melanoma was published recently in the International Journal of Cancer. In addition to Levine and Kark, researchers from the Israel Defense Forces Medical Corps, the National Cancer Registry and other institutions participated in the work.

Israel is one of the few western countries where military service is mandatory. All Israeli Jewish adolescents are obligated to present themselves at age 17 for a medical board examination before military service (even if exempted later from service).

Consequently, use of these data provides a generally representative sample of the young Jewish population, particularly of males.

These findings, say the researchers, provide solid support for the importance of stressing the issue of childhood sun exposure, particularly in light skinned people, as a preventable risk factor for cutaneous melanoma and can aid in directing public health and research efforts.

Here at Green Prophet we urge readers to use sunscreen, and if possible that without parabans. You can try your hand at home made organic sunscreen here. And while we are on the issue, read here why sun caught later in the day is more dangerous than early morning rays.

Image of mom and baby via Shutterstock

Could woman’s best friend be the missing link in the diagnoses of agressive breast cancer types?

Researchers at Ben Gurion University in Israel have conducted research proving that specially trained dogs can differentiate the smell of breast cancer cells from non-cancerous cells in cell cultures. The concept of using the sniffing ability of dogs to detect cancerous cells first emerged a decade ago in an article in a medical journal about a woman who discovered she had melanoma when her dog repeatedly barked at her tumor. Other individuals have reported similar experiences.

“Our research proves that dogs can smell cancer cells in vitro, and that different types of cancer share the same smell print,” said Dr. Uri Yoel, a specialist in internal medicine and professor at BGU.

“In the case of lung cancer or melanoma, this did not come as a great surprise, as it made sense that the cancer could be smelled on the patient’s breath or skin. Regarding other forms of the disease, like breast cancer, it was less evident.

“All smells leave a molecular footprint, but with something like breast cancer it was hard to understand how this worked,” Yoel added.

In this initial research project, the dogs were taught to smell breast cancer cell cultures, but were also tested for their ability to recognize lung cancer and melanoma. They scored a perfect 100 percent in all cases.

The experiment consisted of two canine participants who were taught to smell and detect cell cultures originating from malignant breast cancer and to differentiate them from non-cancerous cell cultures. When the dogs were ready, they were tested for their ability to find one malignant cell culture plate located between four other noncancerous cell culture plates.

The next step is to check the dogs’ reaction to people with cancer. Dr. Yoel will begin by training the dogs to identify lung cancer. To do this, he will expose them to hundreds of smokers to look for those with early stage disease.

Yoel is in the process of publishing a paper on his findings.

Meanwhile in other breast cancer news on Green Prophet: tea might help stave off breast cancer, also turmeric has been found to be a possible preventative to breast malignancies.

Image of woman and dog from Shutterstock

This is a powerful opening for an in your face movie that is bound to win plaudits for its exposure of those who deny, and actually do their bit to cause, and profit from, global climate change.

How you respond to the film will depend on your own journey within the environmental movement: from hard-line activist to armchair academic. It is a film for everyone to see: not a must-see, like I would suggest ‘Age Of Stupid’ is, but certainly one that will stimulate action, discussion, and as the credits announce at the end, possible change through pressure and advocacy.

Craig Scott Rosebraugh’s new documentary is a hard-hitting, pull no punches style of film that exposes the greed and political machinations behind the big corporations that are funding the climate change denial Industry.

In essence it is about eco-systems and human stability. We see drought conditions affecting farmers in the Mid West of the US, and the rising wheat prices due to the low yield.

We see examples of coastal erosion affecting a village in Alaska, where faced with the entire village needing to move (and the efforts to find the huge cost of this from Federal Government), a Tribal Elder says: “we have lost pretty much half the ground I walked on as a little boy…. our people have lost their peace of mind.”

The village hit back in 2008 by suing 24 fossil fuel exploitation companies (Shell, etc) to raise the funds to move.

Trailer of Greedy Lying Bastards

Click here to view the embedded video.

There are no examples given from the Middle East, but those who are based across the dry lands know the issues facing them: increasing desertification, water shortages and coming droughts: environmental collapses combined with unstable Governments (or oil-rich Nations with no interest in measures to hold off or combat changes, or even just changing their ways).

Regular readers of Green Prophet need not be reminded.

After some of these very human-centred examples of the situation of the ground, the doc ratchets up a notch to explore and accuse those involved in the climate change denial businesses. And by god it’s murky!

From the British ‘loony lord’ Monkton (who is forced to admit on camera he has never sat in the British House Of Lords, which kind of discredits him!) (and who is the first speaker featured in the film’s trailer, above) to more serious scientists funded (both privately and through research grants) by the petrochemical Industry (Shell, etc), those who seek to lose their financial stake holdings if the US Govt tightens up its laws on environmental protection, drilling, emissions and various destructive action taken by these Industries, are seen to be hiding behind shady Think Tanks and the so-called ‘Astroturf Groups’, which are (allegedly) “in the business of selling doubt” (about climate change) according to Rosebraugh.

The film, which includes Daryl Hannah as executive director, takes a dive when Myron Ebell (from a prominent Think Tank) is shown saying: “there are no catastrophes in sight due to climate warning.”

Well, Ebell has pretty much hoist by his own petard by now.

Similarly Senator James Inhofe, whose quote “global warming could be the greatest hoax perpetrated on the American people” is a chilling statement and battle cry.

Like many of the current crop of feature docs, particularly those that are ‘green themed’, within the first half the film, a lot of information is given, presented clearly and often starkly; the theme is presented and then explored and unpicked, and then halfway through the piece starts to feel too long – nothing new gets explored, or the style becomes predictable.

“GLB’ moves from the personal experience of climate change, to the political arena being fought in public and behind the scenes, and then back to the personal again – this is a worthwhile and traditional method of telling the story, indeed, it is now a standard grammar for documentary practise.

Interview with Daryl Hannah:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Rosebraugh does eventually gain access to a shareholders meeting, but there is no confrontation or clash of the two sides prevented: activists versus aggressors if you like – it remains largely at the level of ‘us and them’, or more starkly, those who have suffered personal catastrophe, and those who are protecting their own interests in the offending Industries, or through political/financial power.

‘Greedy Lying Bastards’ is what is says on the tin: it exposes those who are corrupt.

It also, tragically, shows a few of the end of the line victims who suffer due to the actions of the corrupt and inert. What we do with this knowledge is now up to us.

::Greedy Lying Bastards

Even if you didn’t give birth to the baby, you can still feed it to make it “yours” in Muslim communities. Here’s how.

Under Islamic Sharia’a law, western adoption practices are frowned upon. When children are abandoned by their birth parents, they may become foster children of other families, but they are not allowed to take on their foster parents’ last name, or to have any rights of a mahram (an unmarriageable kin with whom sexual intercourse is considered incestuous). Only one thing has the power to overcome these restrictions: Breastfeeding.

In countries such as Saudi Arabia, where Islamic law is the rule, breastfeeding an infant or child under the age of two years gives the adopted child the rights of birth making them a mahram.

The Holy Quran clearly states, “Let another woman suckle (the child) on the (mother’s) behalf” (65:6), “Forbidden to you are…your mothers that have suckled you and your foster-sisters” (23:4), and the Hadith by Aisha (blessing of Allah upon her) says, “Breastfeeding denies what is denied by birth.”

These statements support the notion that other than the birth mother, any lactating woman can be the milk-mother of a child and give that child the same birthrights as her own. It is agreed upon by Islamic scholars that in order for her to accomplish this she must feed an infant three to five satisfying feeds.

A satisfying feed is approximated at around 50 ml of expressed breast milk; as soon as she has completed these three to five feeds, she is considered a milk-mother by Sharia’a law and has rights to the child that are identical to those of any birth mother. Having a milk-mother means the child will be a child to her husband, a sibling to her children, and a relative to all extended family members.

Contrary to what many people think, any woman can breastfeed, whether she has recently delivered a baby or not. It is biologically possible for a woman to lactate or relactate, regardless of her childbearing status. I have experienced this possibility in my breastfeeding resource center in Jeddah Saudi Arabia, where I live, while working with several adoptive mothers.

My clients are women who had been married for many years and had difficulty conceiving a child. Under my supervision the mothers adopted and breastfed infants around the age of four months old with 250 ml of expressed breast milk.

Lactation and milk expression took approximately two weeks. To encourage lactation, the mothers began by orally taking 60 mg of Domperidone a day and several cups of brewed Fenugreek while pumping and stimulating their breasts every two hours.

During the first week, small beads of milk could be seen coming out of the nipple; by the end of two weeks, the mothers were able to express 250 ml of breast milk, fulfilling the need for the five feeds to make the children their own.

In some instances, as soon as the child was fed the full 250 ml, the mother ceased the medication and stopped pumping as the milk diminished naturally.  In other instances the mothers continued to pump and feed the babies the milk that was expressed.

Adoptive breastfeeding is a beautiful option for couples in the Middle East who want to adopt a child and give him or her full family rights, and for a child who needs loving parents. Adoptive breastfeeding is a tool that can be used to improve lives. It forces the biological relationship to be primary to rearing an adopted infant. Through breastfeeding, nature has given women a means to give life, improve circumstances, and correct social problems.

More resources on breastfeeding in Islam:

Breastfeeding in a hijab

Muslims who breastfeed save the planet

A Fading Art

This guest post is by Dr Modi Batterjee from the AlBidayah Breastfeeding Resourse and Women’s Awareness Center in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. She’s written a wonderful book on breastfeeding, A Fading Art.

Image of Muslim woman breast feeding from Shutterstock

About a decade ago Israelis were much better at green washing and consumerism than caring for our planet through social green action. That’s all changed. The country has leaped into putting environmental awareness at the top of people’s concerns. This year there are dozens of events going on around the country to celebrate April 22, as Earth Day. Jerusalem boasts the world’s first Green Pilgrim’s conference, and our Miriam will be there reporting. The festivities kick off tonight April 21 with a gala event.

Other events worth noting in Jerusalem is the Cool Globes public art exhibit on the Mamilla Esplanade which portrays large globe structures and new solutions for climate change (see in photo above). The globes will stay on display throughout the summer, unless of course they melt in the hot Israeli sun.

Meanwhile there will be free concerts linked to the pilgrim’s event which is bringing faith leaders from around the world to unite for the green cause. Jerusalem’s deputy mayor Naomi Tsur reasons that if 80 percent of the world identifies with some version of faith, the faith message should be a big part of sustainable tourism to Jerusalem, Israel and other holy land countries.

Naomi Tsur

Also in Jerusalem at the Mamilla esplanade (which Jesse is not fond of as a shopping destination!) will be the Israeli version of the Green Passport project, teaching travellers and tourists to be more respectful to the environment they are in.

The Old City walls will be lit by solar power in a shade of green, and thanks to ecocinema a movie on Israel’s plants and animals will be projected on the walls.

And generally speaking, just a regular walk inside the Old City where life has gone as usual for millennia is a sustainable green act.

Tourists unbeknown to Earth Day are in for a serious educational experience this year from Israel!

There are many ways to fund terror, and one way is by consuming opium or heroin: Opium production in Afghanistan is seeing record increases for the third year straight, reports the United Nations.

This is because foreign military have started leaving the country and as they do drop Afghani farmers back into the hands of the Taliban. Poppy production started going down starting in 2008 when there were eradication (burning opium crops) and incentive efforts to get Afghani farmers to switch to other kinds of crops. But with the Taliban insurgents returning to the provinces they are now supporting opium farmers’ return to the valuable cash crop.

And when we say support, we mean with arms and guns. The Taliban actively fight government officials who try to eliminate poppy fields.

Prices this year range from $160 a kilogram ($350 pound) to $200 ($440).

Despite the religious prohibition, opium and heroin are not just a problem in the west. The drugs are also used by Afghanis, and opium is also heavily consumed by Iranians. This leads to a broad range of societal problems which we are sure readers are aware of.

For the Afghani farmers in the southern Kandahar and Helmand provinces, alternative crops to poppies which form the derivative of opium, do not compare. Farming wheat leaves them hungry, while opium creates a multi-billion dollar business, and the Taliban get their cut.

Someone who can help the Afghani farmers find a more productive and sustainable crop might very well earn the Nobel Prize. Afghanistan is currently the world’s largest producer of opium, and it supplies about 75 percent of the global market.

Image of poppy field from Shutterstock

Egypt is not a country that is fond of reporting oil spills – whether they occur on the Red Sea, in the Suez Canal or the Nile. But it has managed to start clean up a worrying diesel spill into the Nile River, a spill which has leaked onto the shores of Lake Nasser, China.org is reporting. The area is near the High Dam in Aswan region, and the Nile waters the breadbasket of Egypt.

Despite much of the government being crippled by ongoing conflicts and protests, the Minister of State for Environmental Affairs, Khaled Fahmy, reportedly ordered that the area be surveyed and the oil contained. Currently there are two marine vessels working to clean up the lake. That which didn’t evaporate is being sponged up, the groups and marine units working on the spill reported to local media.

Legal action will be taken against the cruise ship, the Environment Ministry promised.

An image of Lake Nasser, Egypt. What you see is also Agilkia Island (or Agilika Island) in Lake Nasser, with the the Philae Temple of Isis seen from the Aswan Low Dam.

Just this past October oil spills were being detected in the Nile by cruise ships and local facilities dumping waste there. It was found contaminating the Nile in Aswan region, which then flowed onto  Luxor, Qena, Sohag and Assuit governorates.

A special unit has been formed to fight Nile River pollution and tourist ships are starting to be followed and inspected.

::China.org

Image of Nile Cruise and Lake Nasser from Shutterstock

I entered a walled courtyard, built around the mosque known as the Little Hagia Sophia (Turkish: Küçük Ayasofya Camii). Surrounded by cloisters, there was a tree-filled garden in the centre in which a marquee had been erected and where men were sitting on trestle tables, drinking coffee and conversing. I put my rucksack down before visiting the mosque and asked them if they would watch it for me. They asked me how long I would be, I said about 10 minutes, to which they said that would be fine.

The little Aya Sofia mosque is nicknnamed after its larger sister, the famous Aya Sofia in the heart of Istanbul, as it is believed that the latter was modelled on it. Originally a church built by the Roman Emporar Justinian, in 527 this small jewel was dedicated to St Sergius and St Bacchus, who Justinian credited to saving his life by appearing in a dream to his uncle who was planning to put him to death for an attempted assasination that he was implicated in. The Ottomans later converted it into a Mosque during Bayazid II’s reign.

I took off my shoes at the entracnce and put on my headscarf. On entering, there is a feeling of lightness, tranquility and peace. The proportions of the building are so pleasing, the blue, white and green interior so soothing, that it is a pleasure just to stand in the entry, take a deep breath and gaze.

You do not feel overwhelemed or overpowered as you do in some larger mosques and churches; you feel somehow as if you are being held in the palm of a hand, nurtured, nestled, safe. Moving further inside, I was able to experience the play of the light, which was able to enter from all sides of the building, giving luminosity all around, yet you were shaded from it.

Although feeling well that morning, I felt a deep relaxation take over me, a sense of peace, and a desire to just sit, and be. The feeling within this place that had been standing for 1500 years was so good, so positive – the energy was incredible.

The Imam seeing my pleasure at being in this place (my face being lit up with a smile of pure joy) encouraged me to go up some stairs, which took me to a small platform which gave me views of the whole building. Here I sat, took in the beautiful domed ceiling, decorated with Islamic geometrical designs and flowers, and soaked in the atmosphere. The feeling of joy moved me to pray, which I did as always, in my own own way and which made my heart soar.

On coming back down the narrow stairwell, I took another staircase up to the platform running above the collonades. From here I was closer to the ceiling and could look right down over the gold pointed minbar where the Imam sits for the prayers on Friday and just soak it all in.

From the windows I could look across the train tracks, that have been built right next to the mosque across the sea to the Islands. Pacing slowly, I could feel underneath the carpets, how uneven the floor was and imagined how many people had walked these floors so long ago, and looked out over this view when there was nothing but a strip of empty land separating the site from the sea.

I came down, and spoke briefly to the Imam who told me that the building was in dire need of financial aid, and that it was suffering. Not enough funding is being put into its upkeep. This made us both sad. I thanked him and left, and stepped into the full daylight. Putting my shoes back on I was able to admire the exterior of the mosque and its decorated portico.

As I was about to pick my bag up to leave, I noticed the fountain in the centre of the courtyard and a goose happily sipping from the water on the flagstones. It was a perfect photo, of nature and spirituality dwelling hand in hand (well they are one and the same aren’t they) but I could not capture it, and perhaps that was for the best.

Taking my bag, I was drawn to the cloisters surounding the mosque. Some beautiful music was coming from one corner and I could see art work on the wall. I recongised it as sufi music, being played on a ney (a reed pipe). The haunting melody makes your heart ache, but in a way that brings it both pain and joy. I wished to purchase it but it was not for sale, perhaps, just as before it was a moment that was too perfect to capture.

All the separate cloisters were owned by artisans, producing calligraphy, ceramics, or selling spiritual books. They were all exceptionally polite, working on their craft, or having a bite to eat together. The aura of the place was of calmness, and gentleness, and I decided to stay a while. I passed another small shop and asked if they had coffee.

The owner told me to take a seat and I sat in a chair, leaning against the wall and took in the view. The mosque to my left and the red tiled cloisters on the remaining sides, my gaze fell on the trees in the centre, with their golden and multicoloured autumn leaves dancing gently to the rhythm of the wind under the mild warming sun.

You could see that in spring many flowers would grow here, and the box trees that lined the courtyard paths reminded me of my grandfather’s house. My coffee arrived with water next to it, as always. As I sipped it and breathed the clean air, I felt an incredible sense of peace and contentment.

There were people around me, but nobody was questioning me or encroaching on my space. We were all sharing the same peaceful space in unison. Later we began to speak, with the owner of the shop, and a man sitting nearby. We spoke of humanity, how every person in this world is special, how even those doing bad things in the world are special and important but have just lost their way and their true sense of self. These conversations just arose naturally, completely organically.

The little Aya Sofia mosque is most certainly a sacred site. In the cities full of manmade business and anxiety few places remain like this, an oasis peace and tranquility in the desert of industrialised modern society.

For more green (and romantic) adventures in Istanbul read:
10 Best Used Clothing Shops in Istanbul
Visit This Secret Forest Outside Istanbul
The Song Lovers of Istanbul
Read All Istanbul Stories on Green Prophet here

Nesrin Everett lives in Geneva, Switzerland and is an explorer of countries, nature and human hearts. This began as a small child – each year she would travel with her parents across Europe and encounter a myriad of individuals and environments.

Being English and Turkish by background, her passion is for unity between peoples, cultures and faiths and to help individuals reconnect with themselves and with the natural environment. In her spare time she loves being in the mountains and forests, trying to live an organic life and brewing delicious teas. Nesrin can be reached at everettski@gmail.com

Little Sofia Mosque image from Shutterstock

We’ve collected a number of films from around the net on Estidama, a LEED-like sustainability rating for communities, villas and apartments in the United Arab Emirates. A system that makes sense for the challenges of the desert climate, and Muslim communities.

Environmental, economic, social and cultural aspects are woven into the rating systems to include homes, mosques, schools to meet the challenges of Abu Dhabi’s challenging environment: hot and dry!  Watch these films to learn more about this unique system developed to reduce the consumption of local resources. Any companies looking to work in the United Arab Emirates’ green space should watch these movies to get the basics.

Click here to view the embedded video.

This film here offers a sales pitch to average people who may not know what a green rating system is:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Plan Abu Dhabi 2030 to regenerate Abu Dhabi neighbourhoods of Khalifa City A and B, central of which will be sustainability and Estidama:

Click here to view the embedded video.

A tour around an Emirati eco-home: what your green home would look like if you live in Abu Dhabi:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Abu Dhabi’s Urban Planning Council and its green vision for families? This organization builds the standards for Estidama.

What do Estidama communities look like? This video below shows the futuristic ideals planned by the Abu Dhabi government, which explains how the new communities will be built to encourage people to walk and cycle more.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Learn more about Estidama here.

Daniella first visited this remote island, formerly an Omani protectorate, with her ex-boyfriend. He moved on but she, now brokenhearted, decided to stay on in order to compile a “reportage” of the local fishermen. Which is where the love story begins. As Daniella spent more time with these men of the sea, the free-spirited Swiss woman couldn’t help but sympathize with their new world stresses. And they in turn looked to her to help.

Subsistence fishing has been disturbed by a variety of poorly documented factors along the coast of Kenya. Overfishing, climate change, pollution are  certainly among them, and the situation keeps getting worse as the progress mentality deepens its grip on this east African nation.

There’s not much else to do in the archipelago south of Somalia, though some tribes do depend on disappearing forests for medicine and food, and given that Lamu is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, tourists are drawn to the ancient Islamic architecture, donkeys, dhow races, mangrove forests and other cultural activities.

But tourism is a shoddy way to sustain a growing population and scores of children end up quitting school early, even Madrasa, according to Ali, because they can’t afford the necessary uniforms.

One day, the fishermen and Daniella were trying to think of a way that they could make some extra money. Daniella suggested someone find a used tanga – just on a whim.

Ali Lamu went away and returned a couple of days later with a weathered sail that had a giant hole in the middle of it. Daniella instantly identified with the fabric, the authenticity which could not be replicated without years of wind and water.

“I looked at it and said…this looks just like the hole I have in my heart at the moment, created by the strength and pain of love…,” Daniella wrote on her blog.

So together she and Ali decided to cover the hole with a giant red heart painted with the same paint he uses on the dhow; she then added the words “Love Again Forever Whatever.”

Daniella loved the piece so much she decided to frame it and hung it in her friend’s art shop, and within an hour a pair of American tourists came by and bought it for a staggering some of money. Ali could hardly believe it.

That was in June, 2008. Five years later and the pair are married and employ roughly 16 full time workers who transform old tangas into bags, wall art, cushions and a series of other inventive designs accompanied with messages of love and peace.

They also arm an arsenal of private individuals with the resources to make their own Ali Lamu products at home, which goes a long way to soften the edge of poverty in Shela especially – the ritzier side of the island inhabited by a series of rich, famous, and notoriously private individuals.

Ali Lamu products are no distributed in several different African and European countries, and continues to spread – all without any marketing.

All images via Tafline Laylin; kindly ask for permission to use them.

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is 60 percent urbanized compared to the global average of 52 percent and is home to one of the world’s most rapidly expanding populations. By 2030, a 45 percent increase of MENA’s urban population will add another 106 million people to urban centres. Countries like Egypt, Iraq, Yemen, Kuwait, and Djibouti will see their urban population doubling over the next 20 years.

In Rabat last month I attended a series of fascinating exchanges among several Mayors and ministers of urban and local administration from Morocco, Tunisia, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Yemen, and the Palestinian Territories. This initiative, supported by the Arab Urban Development Institute, the World Bank and the Center for Mediterranean Integration, was designed to connect MENA city leaders to urban leaders and experts from around the world so that they could explore urban opportunities and share growth management approaches.

Services and manufacturing activities constitute up to 90 percent of the region’s GDP and being hosted in urban centers, there’s no doubt MENA’s cities are its main engines of growth. However – and there was lots of talk about this during the conference – for the past decade, city mayors in the region have been facing three major challenges.

Firstly, a significant lack of resources and capacity at the local level, MENA cities have the lowest share of local government expenditures in the world, for example only 3 percent in Jordan, 5 percent in Tunisia, or 17 percent in Morocco. This is partly the result of a legacy of highly centralized planning and decision-making processes, coupled with limited institutional capacity at the local level.

The second challenge is the large percentage of young people in urban populations: more than 140 million youth are 15-29 year’s old. Youth unemployment ranges from 20 to 40 percent, twice the world average, and about 50 million jobs are needed by 2020 to fully absorb the young people coming into the labor market, mostly in cities of course.The third challenge is that in several countries in the region, mayors still oversee only solid waste, drainage and electric lighting.

In sum, all of this means it is quite difficult for mayors to be fully responsive to citizens’ requests, and if no action is taken, cities could become bottlenecks rather than engines of growth.

To play their vital role in a country’s socioeconomic development, cities need to be well-governed, empowered, and sustainably managed. Growth and job creation cannot be created or sustained if Arab cities continue to under-invest in infrastructure, as was the case during the last decade. This underinvestment has resulted in power blackouts, unreliable and expensive ICT services, congested roads and poor mass transit systems, intermittent and unclean water supply, air pollution, raw sewage effluents, and garbage piling up on public land. Over time this compromises the attractiveness of cities and undermines the private sector’s performance.

The good news is that more and more governments in the region are supporting city-level accountability to citizens. For instance, Tunisia, Yemen and Morocco are moving down the path of decentralization, recognizing that improvements in the quality of life for citizens in a highly urbanized region must come from cities themselves and cannot continue to be addressed solely at the national level. So the burning questions among local and national decision-makers now are these: how to enhance public participation at the local level? How to ensure urban investments are sustainable? How to provide incentives to local governments to perform better? This is a very good sign.

And this is not only a question of providing more financing at the local level. It is also a question of enhancing accountability of cities to both citizens and the national level. Both aspects, financing and governance, are inextricably linked. Our conference discussions made it very clear that a city without good governance and accountability will have difficulty mobilizing tax revenue from its citizens and funds from the national level. And without this support how can city managers respond to the real needs of citizens?

But what we heard in Rabat was governments increasing their focus on integrated local development, starting to explore new, decentralized institutional models, with more empowerment but also accountability at the local level. These are exciting developments that will reposition MENA’s cities, home to 60 percent of MENA citizens after all, at the core of the development agenda.

“This blog was originally posted on Voices & Views: Middle East & North Africa and this reposting does not publicly represent or imply that The World Bank is participating in, or has sponsored, approved or endorsed the views of the Green Prophet.”

Image of typical building with curtains on balconies in Bourj Hammoud, Armenian district, Beirut, Lebanon, Middle East via Shutterstock

It may not have yielded a prize-winning bottle, but excavators in Israel are excited about uncovering an ancient wine press, probably used for making low quality wine and vinegar, according to the Israel Antiquities Authority which has just released news of the find. The wine press was found in a Byzantine settlement next to an ancient clay “light house” which resembles a small church, suggesting the press was owned by early Christians. The site was excavated before new construction took place at a spa in the area of Hamei Yo’av.

The 100-square-meters wine press, says Rina Avner, the excavation director, consisted of a large treading floor sarounded by six compartments that situated north and east of the treading floor.

The treading floor slopes westward causing the juice to flow westward through and into a settling vat. The juice flow from the treading floor passed to the settling vat, where the waste and dirt sank. Two additional pipes connected the settling vat with two collecting vats. The three vats are situated in a row along the wetern wall of the treading floor.

“At the center of the treading floor we found the cavity of a screw that enabled to press the grape waste from the compartments and to produce viniger and low quality wine, mentioned in Rabbinic sources as “paupers’ wine”,” says Avner.

(Related: read more about modern winemaking in Israel here)

The owner of the wine press was probably a Christian, the excavators surmise, because near it they found a ceramic lantern decorated with five crosses. The lantern was designed as a miniature church building, with an oval opening on one side that enabled its owner to insert an oil lamp.

The other sides of the lantern were decorated by geometric impressions creating a design of palm branches. The crosses were carved in the walls of the lantern, so when the lantern was lit in a small room glowing crosses were projected on the walls and the ceiling.

Sa’ar Ganor, the Ashkelon district archaeologist of the Israel antiquities Authority pointed out that “the wine press at Hamei Yoav and three similar wine presses are located along the ancient road leading from Beth Guvrin to ancient Ashkelon and its port, to facilitate the transportation and exportation of the wine to Ashkelon and from the port of Ashkelon to Europe and North Africa.”

The wine press will undergo conservation and will be incorporated into the modern complex of the garden project near the spa of Hamei Yo’av.

Shark populations in the Mediterranean and Black Sea have dropped dramatically over the last two centuries and now risk extinction, with serious implications for the region’s entire marine ecosystem and food chains, according to a new study by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Administration.

“Sharks in the Mediterranean Sea have declined by more than 97 percent in number and ‘catch weight’ over the last 200 years. They risk extinction if current fishing pressure continues,” the study found.

“This loss of top predators could hold serious implications for the entire marine ecosystem, greatly affecting food webs throughout this region,” it added.

The study, Elasmobranchs of the Mediterranean and Black Sea: Status, Ecology and Biology, was undertaken by the General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean, one of several FAO regional bodies working in the fisheries sector.

Sharks critically endangered

It found that cartilaginous fish species, such as sharks and rays, “are by far the most endangered group of marine fish in the Mediterranean and Black sea where 85 species are known to occur. Of 71 species assessed in the Mediterranean Sea in 2007, 30 (42 percent) were found to be threatened, including 13 percent critically endangered, 11 percent endangered and 13 percent vulnerable. Another 18 percent were categorized as near-threatened.

Cartilaginous fish have skeletons made of cartilage, rather than bones. Within that group, sharks, rays and skates are scientifically termed Elasmobranchs. Their biological characteristics, including low fecundity, late maturity and slow growth make them more vulnerable than bony fish, as their regeneration rates are slower.

Issues such as “overfishing, wide use of non-selective fishing practices and habitat degradation” are therefore affecting these species more than others.

In general sharks and rays have not been deliberately targeted in the Mediterranean and Black Sea, but caught accidentally. Annual aggregated reported landings in the Mediterranean and Black Sea currently amount to some 7 000 tonnes, compared to 25 000 tonnes in 1985 – an indication of the severity of their decline.

At the same time, however fishing activities targeting sharks are intensifying due to rapidly increasing demand for shark fins, meat and cartilage.

This is compounded by extensive damage to, or disturbance of, their habitats, caused by shipping, underwater construction and mining or by chemical, sound and electromagnetic contamination.

Among the most recent measures adopted by the Commission to protect sharks and rays is the prohibition of ‘finning’ (removal of fins at sea and discarding of carcass) and the reduction of trawl fishing within 3 nautical miles off the coast to enhance protection of coastal sharks.

The Commission has also recommended Mediterranean and Black Sea countries to invest in scientific research programmes aimed at identifying potential nursery areas and to consider time and area closures to protect juveniles of sharks and rays from fishing activities.

Other initiatives undertaken by the Commission have included the organization of several meetings and courses aimed at better understanding these species and their habitats and creating a background of Regional knowledge to guide GFCM Members in developing national plans to protect these key species.

Image of shark eggs via Shutterstock

Residents of Syrian towns that have run out of heating oil say they are getting sick after resorting to burning crude oil to keep warm. The nearly two-year conflict in Syria made fuel widely unavailable, and though spring is drawing nearer, cold spells are still intermittently hitting some parts of the country.

“The smoke stinks terribly, and many people are suffering from respiratory problems and skin irritations because of it,” said a dentist in the eastern governorate Deir-ez-Zor, calling himself Abu Adnan. “But what can we do? We need warmth and we need something to cook our food with.”

Residents of rebel-held areas of Deir-ez-Zor, Idlib, Aleppo, Hama, Homs and Rural Damascus governorates say heating oil, known as mazout, as well as diesel and gasoline have all but disappeared from the market.

“Last winter, the problem was that fuel became very expensive,” said Abu Adnan. “This winter, you almost can’t find it any more.”

“People are coming to me with lung problems from inhaling the smoke,” said Hassan Hamidi, a doctor in the town Apamea in Hama Governorate. “There are also a lot of bad burns because the oil is easily flammable, and so accidents are frequent.”

Mohamed Elmi, regional adviser for food and chemical safety at the World Health Organization (WHO) says burning unhealthy products is an unfortunately common coping mechanism in conflict zones.

(Related: Why Not Use Biodiesel – Green Prophet reports from Syrian refugee camp)

“Whenever there is an emergency situation, people typically respond by burning crude, wood or furniture – whatever they can get their hands on.”

While it is difficult to determine the health risks without knowing the specific qualities of the crude delivered in Syria, he said, the smoke is generally harmful.

“Now, the FSA makes sure that only some branches of the trees are cut. We don’t want to turn our country into a desert.”
“It usually contains higher levels of sulphur and carbon monoxide, which is very bad for the respiratory system and can cause headache and nausea – particularly because people tend not to open their windows while they are heating.”

Several other factors, including lack of hygiene, dirty water, and stress – could also be at play.

In recent months, rebel fighters have made considerable gains in the northern and eastern governorates, where all of Syria’s major oil fields are located. According to opposition sources and media reports, the opposition has captured four out of five oil wells in Deir-er-Zor, and one out of two in Hassakeh Governorate in the north.

However, nobody is running the wells held by the opposition because almost all oil workers have fled, according to Samir Seifan, a prominent Syrian economic analyst who used to advise the government but is now in Dubai and affiliated with the opposition.

While oil production has slowed dramatically, crude oil pirated from wells is available in moderate amounts. Where crude is not accessible, people have found other means of keeping their houses warm – but at a long-term cost.

Manhal,* a fighter with the rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA) in Hama Governorate, said people have even started cutting down trees from the orchards. “We are losing our trees, and this means our lives will be much harder in the future. We are regressing.”

Residents of Hama also started burning desks and chairs from schools, Manhal said: “Survival is the only thing people are thinking of now.”

In some opposition-held areas, rebels are regulating where residents can cut firewood. In the northwestern governorate of Idlib for example, FSA fighters have started policing the olive groves, said Ibrahim, a resident in Maaret al-Numan.

“This winter, people cut down 500 hectares of olive groves around our village because the cold can be very cruel. Now, the FSA makes sure that only some branches of the trees are cut. We don’t want to turn our country into a desert.”

Still, different groups are trying to benefit from the oil wells in opposition-controlled territory.

“Some people use their connections to obtain oil from the FSA, and then they sell it,” said Abu Emad*, an activist in Rural Damascus. “So, you now find merchants offering crude in many regions.”

*not a real name

This article is reprinted from the humanitarian news source IRIN

The world’s driest region, the Middle East* and North Africa (MENA), is getting drier at an alarming rate. And yet, despite massive population growth (the Middle East’s population grew 61 percent from 1990 to 2010 to 205 million people) predictions of so-called “water wars” have failed to materialize.

So how has a region that water experts say ceased to have enough water for its strategic needs in 1970 proved so resilient to water scarcity?

“Trade is the first means of being resilient; it’s the process that enables an economy to be resilient. The ability to trade effectively depends on the strength and diversity of the economy,” Anthony Allan from King’s College London and the School of Oriental and African Studies told IRIN, the UN’s humanitarian news source.

That does not literally mean that countries import water directly; it is rather that because so much water is used, not for drinking, but for agriculture (around 90 percent), by importing food staples like wheat you are in effect importing water, something Allan calls “virtual water”.

As a result, the region’s growing population imports around a third of its food – a figure that shoots up in the Gulf states where arable land is negligible.

But while such resilience may “miraculously” solve extreme water scarcity and make life that exists today possible in the Middle East, it can create its own vulnerabilities; countries need economies that can generate enough foreign currency to pay for imports.

That may be easy in oil-rich countries with small populations like the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Qatar, but it is far more difficult in places like Egypt, which struggles to find the reserves to pay for wheat imports for its 84 million citizens in a context of declining crude oil exports and a slump in tourism.

Such trade “resilience” is also largely unaffordable in a place like Yemen – the region’s poorest country, which has 25 million people in an extremely water scarce (and hence food scarce) environment.

Each Yemeni only has access to about 140 cubic metres of water annually and the capital, Sana’a, is on track to be the first in the world without a viable water supply.

While trade, an abundance of historically cheap food on international markets, and for some oil – sold at high prices – have combined to create an unexpected resilience in the face of water scarcity, such lessons may not travel well in the developing world.

Trade may have reduced dependency on local water supplies, but it has shifted dependency to international markets and exposed people to fluctuating world prices.

“Water scarcity is not new to the region”
It has also hidden the gravity of the water scarcity situation in the Middle East and made it easier to neglect the development of other solutions to a problem that shows no sign of going away.

A recent study of NASA satellite data published last month found that parts of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran along the Tigris and Euphrates river basins had lost 144 cubic kilometres of water from 2003 to 2009 – roughly equivalent to the volume of the Dead Sea.

An analysis of the data published in the Water Resources Research journal attributes about 60 percent of the loss to the pumping of groundwater from underground reservoirs – reserves people fall back on when rivers dry up.

Underground reserves can only last so long, and importing ever increasing amounts of food to feed a growing population is not an option for poorer countries.

Nevertheless, there are other lessons in water scarcity resilience from the Middle East – either measures that have been shown to build resilience, or that water experts have come to understand would improve the strength of the system to further shocks if they were broadly implemented.

Some of these solutions are not new.

For a start, though the region may be drying, it has been dry for a long time.

Factbox

The Arab region is projected to face severe water shortages as early as 2015, when annual per capita water availability will be less than 500 cubic metres. This is less than one-tenth of the world’s average (currently estimated at over 6,000 cubic metres), according to a 2010 report by the Arab Forum for Environment and Development (AFED).

All but six countries in and around the region (the Comoros, Iraq, Lebanon, Somalia, Sudan, and Syria) face water scarcity, which is defined as less than 1,000 cubic metres of water per person per year.

The region accounts for 3 percent of the world’s population, 10 percent of its land, but only 1.2 percent of the world’s renewable water reserves.

The MENA region is most at risk, with the most water-stressed countries being Bahrain (1), Qatar (2), Kuwait (3), Libya (4) Djibouti (5), UAE (6), Yemen (7), Saudi Arabia (8), Oman (9) and Egypt (10), according to the Maplecroft Water Stress Index 2012.

The region faces the worst water scarcity in the world – up to 100 million people could be under water stress by 2050.

Because of its reliance on rain-fed agriculture, the region’s agricultural output could decrease 20-40 percent by 2080. “Water scarcity is not new to the region,” Hamed Assaf, a water resource management specialist at the American University of Sharjah in the UAE, told IRIN. “It has been the norm for thousands of years and people have adapted their survival strategies to changes in rainfall and temperature,” he told IRIN.

With scientist predicting an increase in extreme weather events, adaptability has become increasingly important. It is also true that there remains a degree of unpredictability in the system, particularly in Egypt where it is not clear if future rainfall will increase or decrease.

Resilience is about being strong in the face of whatever happens. And in any situation, strong water systems make the most of what they have – including through treating and reusing waste water like at the Al Gabal Asfar water treatment plant in Egypt.

Rainwater harvesting

One old technique is rainwater harvesting. “In Jordan there are indications of early water harvesting structures believed to have been constructed over 9,000 years ago,” Rida Al-Adamat, director of the Water, Environment and Arid Regions Research Centre at Jordan’s al-Bayt University, told IRIN.

Jordan harvests 400-420 million cubic metres of water annually, according to Ministry of Water and Irrigation spokesperson Omar Salameh.

“We have 10 major dams with a total capacity of 325 million cubic metres, in addition to hundreds of sand dams in different locations to develop local communities and recharge groundwater.”

Water harvesting can be done at the household level especially in areas that get enough rainfall during the rainy season. “If your area gets 500mm of rain per year, you can collect enough water for household use,” said Assaf.

“In Lebanon, people used to build ponds to collect water during winter and use it later on for irrigation and breeding animals,” said Assaf.

“The main idea of water harvesting is to increase green water or soil moisture… Farmers in the region used to build small sand barriers on slopes to prevent the water from going down and thus recharge the area. Then they used to plant in the areas behind the barriers,” he added.

Water management solutions with data

A key aspect of efficient water use is data collection – important for sound water management at the country level.

“As the saying goes: what you cannot measure you cannot manage,” Heba Yaken, water and sanitation operation analyst at the World Bank office in Cairo, told IRIN. “It is important to know how much you are consuming in order to manage it in a good way.”

Jordan, which some say has one of the most monitored water scarcity situations in the world, has gained widespread recognition for its data collection.

“Jordan’s data is relatively well organized, especially when it comes to agriculture. The volume of water consumption is precisely known in every area. They have installed measuring tools in every area so they know what kinds of crops are being cultivated and the amount of water they consume,” Hiba Hariri from the Arab Water Council told IRIN.

Data-sharing in the region is limited, according to Yaken. “Countries are not as transparent as they should be,” she said.

Other innovative solutions for water management

A whole range of solutions are being piloted and recommended in the Middle East.

In Egypt, the Arab Spring has encouraged farmers to become more outspoken in demanding their water rights, says Yaken from the World Bank.

Farmers have come together in “water users’ associations” to help manage supplies and become more aware of water scarcity issues.

“Farmers are now responsible for the `mesqas’ [canals]”, Yaken told IRIN.

“People at the tail of the `mesqa’ don’t get as much water as the people upstream. People are receiving much more training so that they can manage those disputes between the different farmers, and different demands,” she said.

Elsewhere, capacity building is being carried out by the German Agency for International Cooperation, which is running a climate change adaptation scheme designed to help Arab states climate-proof water systems.

While trade provides substitutes for much agricultural water use, the remaining 10 percent of water needs are increasingly being met by desalination, half of which globally is carried out in the Middle East.

Recent years have seen a large increase in desalination, clearly useful in a region without any landlocked countries, but it is an energy-intensive phenomenon almost entirely powered by fossil fuel power, which raises other environmental concerns.

Saudi Arabia uses 1.5 million barrels of oil a day to power its desalination plants, although it is looking to develop solar-powered plants.

Solar is a largely unexplored option for desalination, but also for increasing the efficiency of water systems, through technologies like solar-powered water pumps.

Water consumption

But although desalination may become an increasingly affordable, and renewable, solution, water experts say it can only be used as part of wider reforms.

A more resilient water system will also need adaptions on the demand side, including more efficient consumption of water, as well as cooperation between countries on the sustainable use of current resources.

“The problem is that we have short-term plans that change with the change of personnel or ministers,” said Hariri from the Arab Water Council.

As climate change and population growth increase pressure on water systems, the MENA region will need to be increasingly efficient in its use of water – and may have lessons for other parts of the world.

*The definition of Middle East used in the OECD/World Bank figures is Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, UAE, Yemen, but not Israel or OPT.

This story is reprinted from IRIN, a UN news agency. Photo of Egyptians fetching water. Water scarcity has already become a fact of daily life for Egyptians © Amr Emam/IRIN

When you Twitter, Google, or just spend leisurely hours checking facebook updates, how does this affect the environment? And think about all that data from YouTube, cloud storage, and blogger’s sites. Where does it get stored and how much energy does it consume? Whoishostingthis provides a really handy infographic giving you the breakdown of the world’s largest data centers, where they are, what they store and what company’s are consuming the most resources. It’s a great cheat sheet if you are studying data and sustainability – and when you are trying to check your carbon footprint.

Via: WhoIsHostingThis

Before Green Prophet signed up for iContact, a fee-based email marketing email newsletter company, we tried to do it on our own. It was a mess and a dazzling disaster.

Emails we sent out didn’t get delivered or were marked as spam; we lost formatting options using our own template, and basically it was just a general disaster which was frustrating, and worse –– time consuming. Inefficient.

Green Prophets like to spend their time researching and writing, not messing around with technology and copying and pasting thousands of contacts into Bcc fields. Before signing up for the iContact service, which we did with a lot of research (we compared services and the costs of other companies) and felt that iContact offered the right service. We’d even tried buying our own email server and it was going to cost about $1000 plus design fees plus bandwidth usage. It was all getting more complicated by the minute. We needed a solution that could help us do what we do best: green news publishing.

While we like to keep our weekly newsletter simple and to the pont, the iContact service gives a broad range of technological solutions to all kind of publishers: whether you are writing the news, a personal blog, or are selling a new painting each week. The company offers tips from entering the confusing world of social media, to reducing the chances your email will go to the spam box. If there are certain catch words that will most certainly label the incoming mail as spam iContact will ask you to correct it.

Human editors read your newsletter over to make sure the message is kosher, ie no porn or naked pics. We were stopped once because an image showed the slightest outline of a nipple. But that’s good for us because our mixed readership includes religious Jews and Muslims. We didn’t want to publish nipples or offend anyone at all.

If you’re on the fence, try it out. For a limited time and limited subscribership, iContact is free.

Scattered pockets of locusts in southern Egypt and northern Sudan are a threat to agricultural land, warns the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Countries along the Red Sea should remain on “high alert and make every effort to find and treat all infestations”, it says. During January, immature locusts known as “hoppers” formed bands and swarms along the coastal plains of the Red Sea, increasing locust numbers significantly in southeastern Egypt, northeastern Sudan, Eritrea and Saudi Arabia, FAO said in its January bulletin.

Despite “substantial” ground control operations in these countries, “more swarms are expected to form in northeast Sudan and southeast Egypt in the coming weeks,” it added in a 17 February update on its website.

“The desert locust is a difficult pest to control,” said Mamoon AlAlawi, secretary of FAO’s Commission for Controlling the Desert Locust in the Central Region, which includes Egypt, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Oman and Yemen. “Limited resources for locust monitoring and control, and political turmoil within and between affected countries further reduce the capacity of a country to undertake the necessary monitoring and control activities.”

AlAlawi said this threat was unlikely to turn into a humanitarian crisis, with the winter breeding period coming to a close and the current number of swarms relatively limited. Still, if the rains are strong in the coming weeks, increased breeding could lead to more swarms. “The situation is potentially dangerous,” he said, if swarms reach the interior of Saudi Arabia, a breeding area during the spring.

So far, a small number of locust swarms have appeared in areas near Egyptian tourist resorts in Marsa Allam and in the partially desert area of the New Valley, according to local media reports. Numerous high-density groups of mature adult locusts also laid eggs in the Abraaq area of the southern Red Sea coast in Egypt, and by the end of January, immature adults were also forming groups there, FAO said. In northern Sudan, swarms have invaded cropping areas in the interior in recent days, attacking winter crops and fruit orchards.

Late last year the Ministry of Agriculture sent 14 combat squads to the south, having learned a lesson from tardy action against the 2004 locust invasion, (Arabic). Nearly 11,000 hectares were cleared of locusts in January, with the support of the FAO Commission for Controlling the Desert Locust in the Central Region, which strives to minimize the use of pesticides, through its EMPRES programme.

But despite these efforts, locust numbers increased significantly in January, especially along the Red Sea coast between Egypt and Sudan, FAO said.

AlAlawi said the first warning about the current situation of desert locusts in Egypt was issued at the end of last summer, “so sufficiently in advance”. The control operations were successful in minimizing the threat, but some swarms survived and headed to the Red Sea, where weather conditions were warmer. This encouraged breeding and they were able to lay eggs in December and January.

“As Desert Locusts are always on the move, it is difficult to totally control them in one time,” AlAlawi said.

Others are more critical of the eradication efforts.

“The fact is that locusts had already managed to cross the border into Egypt and this means that they will threaten our fields,” said Ahmed Amr, a professor of agriculture from Zagazig University. “This shows that the government did not do its job of combating these insects at the border well. Once these locusts are in, you cannot stop them from ravaging the crops.”

Meanwhile, experts like Saeed Al Zeiny, a professor of entomology from Ain Shams University, pin their hopes on the weather. He says if the direction of the wind changes, locusts might be forced to change their course.

“It is not easy to control locust hordes on the move,” Al Zeiny said. “Everybody must also know that these locusts keep changing every now and then. This means that the pesticides that proved efficient last year can be inefficient this year.”

Egypt is Africa’s biggest wheat grower, with expected output of 8.5 million tons in 2012-2013, according to the International Grains Council. With around 3.6 million hectares of agricultural land in Egypt, there is a lot at stake in the case of a major locust invasion.

The country’s worst locust invasion since the 1950s was in November 2004, when millions of the red desert insects swept into Cairo and the Nile Delta. At the time, the Land Centre for Human Rights, a local NGO devoted to agriculture issues, reported that 38 percent (Arabic) of Egypt’s crops had been damaged as a result of the invasion.

Abdurrahman Afifi, a farmer from the town of Al Ayat south of Cairo who lost all his five acres of crops in the 2004 locust invasion, has already started warning neighbours and relatives to scatter poison bait or dust in their fields to combat the insects. “The problem is that most of these people earn their living solely from agriculture. This means that they will lose everything if they lose their crops,” he said.

This is reprinted from IRIN; Image of locust swarm from Shutterstock

Health officials in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) are calling on residents to get vaccinated against the H1N1 virus (“swine flu”) after 25 deaths in recent weeks.Over 700 infections of H1N1 have been reported in the West Bank and 20 in the Gaza Strip, and officials say the number of recent H1N1-related deaths is almost certainly underreported.

“The virus has claimed 25 lives to date, three of them in Gaza, and we are in the midst of vaccinating,” Asad Ramlawi, general director of primary health care at the Palestinian Ministry of Health, told IRIN, the UN news agency.

He said 25,000 people had been vaccinated as part of a regular programme over the last few months, and an additional 25,000 have been vaccinated since the outbreak.

“Right now we are targeting patients at risk of heart disease, diabetes, blood diseases and of course, pregnant women. We are seeing a good response to our efforts to raise awareness [of the importance of] getting vaccinated,” he said, saying they had good stocks of the vaccine in reserve.

Young children, babies and infants under five, old people and pregnant women are considered to be at the highest risk of contracting H1N1, an infection caused by an influenza virus believed originally to have infected the lungs of pigs.

The latest surge of cases was detected in the West Bank in early December 2012 but the first cases in Gaza came to light in mid-January, with reported deaths in the Jenin, Qalqilya and Hebron regions, according to Palestinian health officials.

In the 2009 pandemic, dozens of Palestinians died from H1N1.

And elsewhere in the region?

In Israel, a twenty-eight-year old woman died on Monday night of H1N1 at a hospital in Beer Sheba.

Previously, the only reported H1N1 death was of a three-year-old boy in the city of Petach Tikva in mid-January, the first reported in the country since the winter of 2009- 2010 when 96 Israelis died.

Since then, a large-scale vaccination campaign has been carried out. Four unvaccinated women have been hospitalized with H1N1 in the past few weeks.

Israeli Ministry of Health spokeswoman Einav Shimron- Greenbaum told IRIN H1N1 in Israel is “at a medium level as of now; we are aware of the reported deaths in the PA [Palestinian Authority] and are monitoring the situation, as we are with worldwide reports of the situation.”

Nine confirmed deaths were reported in Yemen in the last two months; three deaths in Iraq; two in Jordan; and 20 non-fatal infections in Tunisia.

In 2009 the World Health Organization declared that the H1N1 strain of the flu virus had become pandemic. It went on to cause the deaths of at least 18,500 people before the pandemic was declared over in August 2010.

According to statistics, about 500 people die from the common flu every year in Israel.

::IRIN news

Image of a sick child, Shutterstock

Political tension in Egypt in the aftermath of the revolution which began nearly two years ago, has hit tourism, led to high food prices, and caused an economic slowdown which is raising food security concerns. In 2012, Egypt was the world’s largest wheat importer (read this story on how wheat connects the planet), shipping in 11.5 million tons, and highlighting the gap between official food sustainability goals and reality.

“There is an urgent need to increase wheat productivity,” said Nagui Saeed, head of Egypt’s Wheat Producers’ Association – not just to conserve foreign currency but also to cater for Egypt’s growing population, which has nearly doubled in the last 30 years to 83 million.

Egypt’s long-term food security faces a number of challenges: nearly 99 percent of the population live on about 4 percent of the land (adjacent to the River Nile where most of the fertile land is).

Arable land covers around 3 percent of the country, and is under threat from desertification, urbanization and salination, particularly north of the Aswan High Dam, leading to the loss of an estimated 11,736 hectares of agricultural land every year.

The grand dream has always been to transform little-used desert areas and expand out of the densely-populated Nile valley.

What happened to Mubarak’s Toshka project?

In the mid-1990s former leader Hosni Mubarak initiated the Toshka Project (also known as the New Valley Project) to cultivate 202,347 hectares of farmland in the western desert, irrigating it with water from nearby Lake Nasser, a vast man-made lake created by the construction of the Aswan High Dam on the Nile in the south. (We covered in-depth what happened to Toshka here).

Funding problems, mismanagement and wavering political support have hindered the large-scale project, which nevertheless still looms large in discussions on food self-sufficiency.

Click here to view the embedded video.

But in the current political instability, the dream of a single project turning vast tracts of desert into grain farms looks more like the pet-project of an authoritarian leader than the most pressing priority for the newly elected government.

The Muslim Brotherhood, to which President Mohamed Morsi belongs, opposes the scheme, but the wider policy idea of improving food security for a growing population remains part of state policy.

How can current farms be improved and expanded?

“There is determination at the national level to achieve self-sufficiency in wheat,” Iman Sadek, a senior researcher from the Agricultural Research Academy (within the Ministry of Agriculture), and the head of the National Wheat Campaign (a project that aims to reduce Egypt’s wheat production-consumption gap), told IRIN.

Using desert land seems a key part of the solution, she says.

“But we have to bear in mind that the variety of wheat that can be grown in the desert can be different from the one grown in the Nile valley or delta.”

Away from mega-projects, some progress has been made, if slowly.

According to the Ministry of Agriculture, Egypt produced 8.7 million tons of wheat in 2012, 4 percent more than in the previous year, itself a good year.

“Productivity improvements can be done by both increasing the lands cultivated with wheat and also applying new technologies to raise the productivity of present fields”, said Saeed of the Wheat Producers’ Association.

“There is determination at the national level to achieve self-sufficiency in wheat” – Iman Sadek, senior researcher, Agricultural Research Academy The total land area sown with wheat has increased to 1.2 million hectares in 2012, from 1.1 million hectares in 2011, according to Agriculture Minister Salah Abdel Mo’men.

The new Egyptian government has a target of producing locally 75 percent of domestic wheat needs within the next three years. Pilots carried out in 2011 and 2012 by the Egyptian Agriculture Research Centre and Egypt’s Academy of Scientific Research and Technology have shown productivity can be boosted by 30 percent.

The increased yields were attributed to new varieties developed by the Agricultural Research Academy and new agriculture methods (raised bed planting).

What’s holding back greater food production?

Agriculture needs fertile land and water, both of which are in short supply in Egypt, but when it comes to persevering fertile land, water is ironically the biggest threat.

The Nile Delta generates a third of national agricultural production, but saltwater intrusion is now a major problem with the Mediterranean having risen 20cm in the past century.

Egypt is particularly exposed to climate change.

The country has an annual water shortfall of seven billion cubic metres, with the Nile the only regular freshwater source, and itself threatened by growing water-use upstream.

Agriculture will bear the strain of any decrease in water availability, consuming as it does 85 percent of supply, according to Egypt’s state of the environment report, which criticises the “the continued use of unsustainable agricultural methods of planting and irrigation management”.

With only 55 billion cubic metres every year, Egypt does not have enough water to quench the thirst of its growing population and irrigate its farmland (around 3.3 million hectares in total).

What’s the government doing?

Current the government is importing cereals from global markets, leaving the country’s poor heavily exposed to fluctuations in world food prices, effectively importing water in food form.

The lack of security on the open market – as shown when Russia banned wheat exports in 2010 – has even prompted the government to consider growing cereals in other countries, including Sudan.

A delegation from the Ministry of Agriculture is preparing to visit Sudan later this year to examine the possibility of growing wheat on as many as 470,000 hectares of Sudanese land.

While better use of current water supplies seems to be the most practicable idea for improving national food security, others see a broader solution just around the corner.

Scientists say the western desert is home to a huge groundwater reservoir that could help Egypt reclaim up to 1.5 million hectares of land in the future.

Khaled Abd El-Kader, a professor emeritus of stratigraphy from Assuit University, used satellite images of the Great Sand Sea, an area in the western desert that contains huge sand dunes up to 100 metres in height, to search for ground water.

Findings from a field trip to the area concluded that there may be a huge and accessible underground water oasis spanning Chad, Egypt, Libya and Sudan.

An earlier study by water expert Maghawry Diab pointed to the presence of huge amounts of underground water in the Western Desert, enough for the reclamation of 261,000 hectares of land, and suggested that Egypt could do without the Nile for reclamation purposes if this source could be tapped.

The government, according to Sadek of the Agricultural Research Academy, is digging experimental wells in the desert to try and reach this water but in the meantime researchers at the Academy are focusing on new varieties of drought- and salinity-resistant wheat.

(This article is reprinted from the UN reporting service, IRIN); top image via panopticon