Climate change will disrupt every aspect of life in the next few decades, including the kernel of Middle Eastern culture. A Middle East without nuts is like Belgium without chocolate: virtually impossible to imagine. But a recent report published in…
By 2100, at least ten billion people will devour the planet. At a recent film screening in Al Ain, one female student asked: “what’s the point of changing if nobody listens to us?” It is a powerful question and it…
Following the food riots that rocked the Middle East, Algeria is bolstering its agricultural self-sufficiency through irrigation projects and tax breaks for local producers Food security is a tricky topic to grasp because food doesn’t just rely on the water…
Israeli idealists plan to develop a land trust in the northern Galilee to encourage rural homesteading. Despite its emergence as a developed, industrial country, Israel has a bevy of close-to-the-earth learning experiences to choose from. Several kibbutzim throughout the country…
Professor Mohammed Kassas in his office at Cairo University, photographed by Louise Sarant If Hassan Fathy is the Middle East’s father of sustainable architecture, then Mohamed Kassas is the prophet of desertification. The spry ninety year old Egyptian Professor of Botany…
Scientists have discovered incidents of watermelon chlorotic stunt virus (WnCSV) in melons and watermelons in Jordan. Fewer cold spells are great for pests, but terrible for farmers. Last year, there were higher incidents of bed bugs in the UAE as…
The Ahmad Family in Egypt shows us what they eat. As popular uprisings continue to spread in Middle East, rising food costs for stable crops like rice and wheat cannot be ignored as underlying factors in the political unrest. In…
A banal for-profit product for the Third World may revolutionize the treatment of human waste In the Middle East and other regions with increasing water stress, using clean water to whisk excreta out of sight is increasingly wasteful. For the…
With GMO beets likely to hit the US market, and their sugar to reach global markets, savvy eco-conscious consumers are going to have to pay extra attention to finding organic, non-engineered beets. One prevailing assumption about GMO foods is that…
Climate change, peak oil and too many mouths to feed topples the first of the world’s now fragile economies. Egypt is just the first nation to see the instability predicted as a result of climate change, peak oil and the…
