Lebanon celebrated its Arbor Day on December 7. Activists, students and environmentalists gathered in open spaces to plant trees. Recent years have seen growing grassroots and government efforts to preserve Lebanon’s famed cedar forests, but there has been scant attention paid to rare juniper trees. There is currently no law to protect the vanishing Lebanese […]
Lebanese don’t usually need an excuse to party but they might need an incentive to recycle. Albeit one of the only countries at the COP18 climate change negotiations to commit to reducing their greenhouse gas emissions, Lebanon has a shoddy recycling record – mostly because it lacks the necessary infrastructure. Which is why the NGO […]
Young Arabs in Doha are telling the Arab world it’s time to take a lead on climate change during the first climate change talks to be held in the Middle East. With more than a billion Muslims in the world, Arab activists claim that Muslim leaders are pretty much silent about global warming and environmental […]
Lebanon’s carbon emissions are relatively small compared to other Middle Eastern nations such as Qatar or the United Arab Emirates, and pale in comparison to that of China and the United States, but its environmental record is far from pristine. Heaps of burning trash and some of the world’s most disgusting waterways are just two […]
When a Lebanese hunter posted an image of two men presenting a bonnet full of dead birds on his Facebook page, he didn’t get quite the response he hoped to receive. Instead of cheers and congratulations, he received leers and boos. Fouad Nassif has since removed the image from his wall, but not before it appeared […]
Movie stars shone on Abu Dhabi red carpets, where the curtain rose on a pair of green films connected to the Middle East. This year’s Abu Dhabi film festival featured two green-themed films aimed at raising awareness of a decidedly un-Hollywood subject: global waste management. Both movies, Trashed and Polluting Paradise, were sponsored by sustainable […]
Animals Lebanon rescued two striped hyenas that had been captured as pups in the wild and they are now safe in their new home in southern France. Five year old Rita was living in the Ansar Zoo, which was bombed in 2006 and left to ruin. Sara, just two, spent her entire life in a […]
Imagine the famous pyramids under water? Alexandria, Egypt holds top risk, followed by Istanbul, Turkey. Think “Mediterranean” and most Westerners conjure up Monte Carlo or Mykonos, Cannes or Nice, often overlooking the southern coastline cities that lie in Turkey, Cyprus, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco. Fourteen Mediterranean port cities are at risk of extreme and […]
Established in the lead up to the COP18 Doha negotiations, the Arab Youth Climate Movement brings together over 20 campaigners from 15 Middle East/North Africa countries As the saying goes, there is power in numbers. So it’s great to see environmental organisations across MENA come together to “create a more sustainable, prosperous, meaningful, just, and […]
Skiing in Israel or Iran might not be what you think of if you’ve ever skied the Rocky Mountains in Canada or the Alps in Switzerland, but as people look ahead to the winter, Green Prophet can show Middle East readers that skiers can stay close to home. While you be looking around for cheap ski […]
More than 200 cyclists took over the streets of Beirut Sunday demanding a sustainable public transportation system for Lebanon. Haunted by the pollution poisoning their city’s car-clogged roads, more than 200 cyclists took over Beirut last week Sunday in an effort to demand a revival of its once-decent public transportation system. The seven kilometer (5 […]
Reduce one food source and increase pressure on others. We’re all going to die! Only a lot later and with healthier arteries according to political satirist Stephen Colbert’s side-splitting riff on recent reports that the global bacon supply is “cooked”. Britain’s National Pig Association released data recently showing that European pig herds are declining “at a significant […]
Live long enough and we all know heartbreak, but what happens when a well-loved sustainable project walks away? Looking for day trips to explore modern Middle East architecture, I stumbled across Jordan’s The Aqaba House (TAH). This ambitious little house was the first modern home fully based on green building principles specific to its Aqaba location. Oriented […]
Tunisian buildings are the most energy intense in the Arab world. Carboun has released a powerful infographic which details how energy is consumed in the Middle East. Using data received from personal contributions, the World Bank and the International Energy Agency, founder Karim Elgendy has mapped out energy use by country in each of the […]
Mashrabiya screens are a common element in Middle Eastern architecture and yet few people outside the design world realize how much work goes into making them. In order to unveil the extraordinary care and patience that goes into each handcrafted screen, Beirut-based Carwan, the Middle East’s first popup art gallery, commissioned mischer’traxler to design the Mashrabiya […]