The strong grey trunk, the wide velvety leaves, the sticky itchy white milk resin that leaks from the cracked leaves, its round crimson fruits with their bellies filled with honeyed goodness. In my opinion, nothing beats a fig tree.

The fig (which tastes great baked or with fresh cream and arak) is strictly native to the Middle East, specifically Syria and Anatolia. From there, the fig has been transported to North Africa, Spain and Italy, South America, Mesopotamia, Iran, India and most recently in California. Now, you can even order a fig tree online and plant it in your yard in the right climate or inside your home anywhere in the world.

The worldliness of the fig tree aided by the master of it all, the special pollinating fig wasp the Blastophaga psenes, have resulted in over 750 varieties, each with its own particular genetic print. Like a person, each fig has a different character: a taste, shape and color.

The names of many of the Middle Eastern fig varieties take root from descriptive words, for example the variety named Byadi originates from the Arabic word Abyad for white, and it can be found in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan.

In Italy, fig varieties are named after their place of origin like “Dei greci”, of the Greeks, or “Della Monaca”, of the nuns, alternatively they are named after the period in which they ripen such as the “Natalina”, Christmas period or “Tardiva”, the late comers.

Here is a sample of fig varieties from the Middle East:

Lebanese red: Lebanese varieties found along the coast.

Barada: Honey flavored from the historic Christian village of Sidnaya outside of Damascus

Byadi: From the village of Mishtayeh in Syria.

Shtawi: Shtawi comes from the word Shitaa’ in Arabic which means winter. It ripens very late, usually in November into Christmas and it is a variety grown in Koura, Lebanon.

Sumaki: Originally from Syria, it’s one of the finest tasting figs. It’s named after the Sumac spice.


Persian white: Originally from Northern Iran.

Rimaley: Collected from Mishtayeh, Syria. Its a long fig with red interior.

Oh and by the way, the fig is not a fruit but a  flower “grown inwards”. To be precise, the fig is the infructescence or scion of the tree, in which the flowers and seeds are borne inside.  Here is how you can enjoy your infructescence 5 different ways.

Make summer sing with fresh figs, arak and cream

The post Know your fig varieties from Syria, Lebanon and Iran appeared first on Green Prophet.

Iranian architect Nader Khalili, founder of the California Earth and Architecture Institute and proponent of the- dare we say- revolutionary SuperAdobe building technique, would be proud.

In the coming week from the 11th to the 14th of March 2015, l’Iran will inaugurate the first edition of “Regeneration of earthen architecture festival”  which aims to promote earth as the building medium of the future.

The event, organized by the Vernacular Architecture Research Center (VARC), and will take place in Yazd.

This is a positive step forwards towards the recognition and practical application of Iranian sustainable building knowledge still locked inside vernacular architecture.

Nader spent much of his life pushing for the modern application of ancient building techniques in Iran, but in the end his dream came true in the US and not in his own country (it is true what they say about dreams come true in America).

Today we may start to see changes, like the modern integration on earthen wind catchers -bagdirs- to substitute air conditioning in Iran.

The post First Earth Architecture festival in Iran would make Nader Khalili proud appeared first on Green Prophet.

Shale gas exploitation in the Sahara is not the same as shale gas exploitation in the US. There are added complications, namely the dependence of fracking activities on a trans-boundary hydraulic system (the North Western Sahara Aquifer System), in a water stressed region, that depends primarily on that very system for its own water needs.

As shown by the recent waves of protests that spread from the southern region of Algeria to the rest of the country as the government announced the beginning of shale gas extraction, a very new threat is set to destabilize the Saharan region.

With the discovery of significant shale gas reserves in the region, and at a time when fracking has been banned in France and it has become increasingly controversial in the UK; multinationals are pushing to exploit reserves in the Saharan region. But the real implications surrounding shale gas extraction applied to the Saharan context have been highly overlooked by domestic governments, worse still there is limited transparency surrounding these activities.

As the “imported” technique of shale gas extraction, fracking, has started to play out in the Sahara; Why should this not only be of national concern but also of regional and global concern?

Aside from the known environmental and social concerns with shale gas extraction, fracking in the Saharan region has a central added complication: the geopolitics of water.

Mohamed Balghouthi, cofounder of the Economic and Scientific Intelligence Unit of Tunisia (GIEST), was one of the first Tunisian figures in 2011 to denounce how shale gas extraction in Tunisia is primarily question of water and therefore food sovereignty . The link between shale gas and sovereignty is also a central issue for rest of North Africa. Here is why.

Understanding the scale of water consumption for shale gas extraction

According to the Stockholm International Water Institute the total water requirement for a fracking well during its entire lifetime (20-40 years) can be anywhere between 24,000 m³ (24 million liters)  and 500,000 m³ (500 million liters).

If Shell in Kairouan, Tunisia, sticks to its plan of drilling 740 wells it will consume between 17.76 million m³ (17.76 billion liters) to 370 million m³ (370 billion liters) of water in 50 years.

This is roughly equivalent to the water consumption of the current Tunisian population for the next 100 years (see below for calculations). In other words, Shells fracking project in Tunisia is drinking 100 years’ worth of water for the entire Tunisian population.

Tunisia is already a water stressed country with per capita renewable water availability of 486 m³—well below the average of 1200 m³/capita for the Middle East and North Africa Region (MENA) region. This is also true for Algeria and Libya.

Water has no frontiers:

Shale gas extraction in the Saharan region will require companies to tap into the North-Western Sahara Aquifer System (NWSAS) for water. This water is needed to release gas from the fractures (for more information on fracking see here). The NWSAS extends over a surface twice as large as France and straddles three countries; Tunisia, Algeria and Libya. With more than 30 000 Km³ of water, accumulated over the past million years, this subterranean aquifer and has enabled the urban and agricultural development of the semi-arid regions of these countries for the past 30 years. But this water is currently over-exploited; the Sahara and Sahel Observatory and the Institute of Research for Development have recently calculated that the average annual rain water recharge meets only 40% of the water quantities withdrawn from the aquifer.

Given the considerable amount of water required for fracking, the current water stressed and water precarious condition of the Saharan region and the fact that three countries by and large depend on the same hydraulic system; it doesn’t take much to put two and two together to see that fracking in the Saharan region will cause significant civil strife in the region.

Naturally with water comes the question of food sovereignty, already a hot topic in the region. Data from the 2014 Near East and North Africa Food and Agriculture Statistics Yearbook shows that in 2010, all of the five North African countries imported 60 %  or more of their cereals from abroad. Tunisia imports 60% of its cereal needs, 70% in Algeria and 90% in Libya. The reasons for the loss of food sovereignty in the region are numerous: mis-management of nation-wide agricultural development, the adoption of neoliberal economic policies pressurized by international politics, and water management. Yet the onset of shale gas fracturing activities exposes the region to additional threats to food sovereignty, because water is being directed towards energy production (which is largely exported) rather than domestic consumption and agriculture.

Shale gas extraction in the Sahara is a particular threat for farming realities in the oasis. When unemployment increases in the region, or in the face of civil unrest or war, it has been shown that people tend to return to their farmlands to create a livelihood for themselves. In the semi-arid regions closest to the Saharan desert, aside from tourism and high impact industries like mining, date plantations are an important source of income. Palm date plantations depend entirely on groundwater and appropriate irrigation systems – the foggaras–  a product of centuries of human ingenuity. Other forms of agricultural practices in Tunisia, Algeria and Libya depend between 60% and 90% on water from the NWSAS for its irrigation. Once the primary source of water available to the Saharian populations in these three countries is polluted or runs dry, the livelihoods of an estimated 40 million people will be directly threatened. As we have already witnessed with the Arab spring, dissatisfaction is likely to be translated in contagious social unrest, spreading across the region.

This is why people are protesting extensively throughout Algeria.  The current “imported” practices of Shale gas extraction in the Sahara is touching the resource that is most dear to the region, water.

Water Calculations:

Average water consumption per well = 24,000 m3 (24 million liters) – 500,000 m3 (500 million liters)

Number of wells Shell plans to drill in Kairouan = 740

TOT water consumption for Shell’s operation in Kairouan (Tunisia) between 17.76 billion liters (24 million liters water x 740 wells) and 370 billion liter (500 million x 740 )

Average water consumption per capita in Tunisia = 296 m3

Tunisian current population = roughly 10 million

TOT annual water consumption in Tunisia = 2.96 billion liters

The post Shale gas “fracking” in the Sahara is worse for water appeared first on Green Prophet.

The quinoa craze turned what was once a cheap, nourishing staple diet for Bolivians and Peruvians into an unaffordable grain for many of the poor locally. Read here about the dirty secret of quinoa. The appetite of western culture, and fanatic vegetarianism has increased demand for quinoa stratospherically: in 2013 the price of quinoa tripled from 2006 prices.

Prices have risen to such an extent that the poorer populations of Peru and Bolivia can no longer afford it and instead substitute for cheaper imported junk food. In Lima, quinoa now costs more than chicken and outside the cities land is increasingly being turned into quinoa monocultures.

Gaga for agar-agar

A similar story is happening in Morocco, El Jadida, with “red gold” a mineral rich seaweed used to produce agar- agar a natural gelling agent popular with cooks and professional chefs, used in pharmacology and cosmetics and an alternative to animal-sourced gelatins for vegetarians and religious groups that ban pork.

Over in Japan, agar is used for sauces, soups, jellies, and desserts. In the Western world, it is used as a gelling and stabilizing agent by meat and fish canneries, and in baked goods, dairy products, and candies as well.

In 2010 over exploitation pushed the fishing ministry to place quotas restricting its harvest, and today rising demand and falling supply has resulted in increasing export prices.

Agar-agar is an important gelling agent for people who cannot consume pork products, like Jews and Muslims. But it is also a staple for vegans.

Yet fishermen and are not seeing the economic benefits from these rising prices, research has shown that fishermen often sell the produce half the price pre-established by the quota  and are forced to dive deeper, with dangerous consequences  in the hope of finding this increasingly scarce, expensive “gold” (which by the way, currently sells at 0.4 USD per Kg- so not really gold) .

Killing Morocco’s ecosystem and society

Aside from the negative social consequences, overharvesting seaweed also has obvious negative to the local marine ecosystem.  Seaweed plays a major role in marine ecosystems , in fact they are considered “keystone species” since they are one of the first organism in marine food chains.

They provide nutrients and energy for animals, either directly when fronds are eaten, or indirectly when decomposing parts break down into fine particles and are taken up by filter-feeding animals. Seaweeds also act as filters by taking up nutrients and carbon dioxide from seawater reducing local coastal eutrophication and ocean acidification.

What was once ordinary red algae, has now become “red gold” with negative consequences on the fishermen and the environment.

We have to remember that nowadays crazes have a more significant impact than in the past. Globalization, increasing communication streams, increasing population, and rising incomes and the concomitant increase in purchasing power means that the decisions we make today have a larger ripple on effect on populations and environments that are far from our sight.

Using exotic foods, supplements and medicine to fulfill health habits, or becoming fanatic about not using certain produce may not be the answer to a more sustainable, global economy.

Looking at your own country’s tradition, local crop and seed wealth and medicinal herbs is just as efficient at supporting health and has a marginal and sustainable impact on local economies.  Like always, balance is the key and the solution lies right next to you.

Image of Red gold seaweed harvest in Morocco by Fadel Senna; image of agar red seaweed from Shutterstock

The post How vegan demand for agar is killing Morocco’s red seaweed appeared first on Green Prophet.

Rachel Carson would be shocked: A recent study has found that the concentrations of banned chemicals like PCBs, DDT and organochlorines found in human breast milk of women sampled throughout Tunisia  indicate widespread and elevated contamination particularly in older members of rural populations with high dairy and meat intake.

Although these concentration levels are relatively low for developing countries, Tunisia’s population is highly exposed since more than 1,200 tons of obsolete pesticide stocks still remain uncontained and continue to pollute surrounding areas and waterways.

The threat persistent organic pollutants (POP), such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB), organochlorine (OC) and dichlorodiphenytrichloroethane (DDT) pose to the environment and human health is well documented.

These compounds found in pesticides, industrial chemicals or unwanted industrial byproducts are characterized with a high resistance to degradation, long half-lives in humans, and have been confirmed to bioaccumulate in fatty tissues such as blood, breast milk, and adipose tissues through dietary intake.

POPs have been found to compromise the endocrine system, hormone production, metabolic processes, the reproductive system, causing genetic damage and cancer.

Organochlorines widely used as insecticides in Tunisia

In Tunisia OC chemicals were widely used from the end of 1940s to 1980s for insect control and agricultural pest control. Despite the use of these compounds has been prohibited in the late 1980s, OCs are still ubiquitous in Tunisia’s environment and biota.

Related: See how our phosphorus addiction is killing this mining town

In 2004, Tunisia ratified the Stockholm Convention on POP, which postulates the elimination of these pollutants by limiting its production, use and commercialization and the application of a national plan that identifies and manages obsolete stocks (primarily PCB). Today, Tunisia benefits from a 16,7 million USD donation from the Global Environment Facility with the intent of eliminating these stocks by 2017.

Although this is an essential project, Tunisia has important steps to make in the strict application of existing laws, resorting to independent environmental judicial systems that penalize polluters.

Today Tunisia, is dotted with unregulated industrial polluters that contaminate waterways (see how locals jump into this magical lake despite warnings!), and continue to pump POPs in the domestic food chains and the biota.

Before Tunisia can start talking about bio, it needs to talk about POP. And if you are breastfeeding or know someone pregnant, send them this article about stuff they don’t need:

10 breastfeeding products you do not need to buy

The post Breast milk reveals how many banned pesticides plague Tunisians appeared first on Green Prophet.

Tunisians are famous the world over for trash selfies. Now simple calculations made by this Green Prophet shows that Tunisia, and many other countries in the MENA region, could spend at least three times as less than they do for collecting municipal solid waste by donkey.

Tunisia’s rubbish problem is an embarrassing affair for many nationals, in particular tourist guides, who reminisce of a cleaner Tunisia.

Thankfully today civil society is denouncing and government seems to have caught on by deploying a new  “environmental municipal”.  These are, ideologically speaking, very much needed steps in the right direction, yet there are larger, practical restraints.

RELATED: Tunisians dive into mysterious lake that appears overnight, despite radiation fears

For example fiscal restraints risk concentrating efforts in the areas only where rubbish is dangerously visible:  tourist attractions and urban centers, leaving rural areas largely out of the cleaning equation.

Tunisia’s trash is a universal problem,  that touches the most rural of areas and the most desolate of villages. Considering the geographic disarticulation of such municipalities, collecting trash is an expensive ordeal for the Tunisian government to deal with, yet cheap and eco-friendly ideas taken from positive experiences elsewhere (only 160 km away in fact) can be adopted to employ locals and improve waste management.

In 2007, the mayor of Castelbuono , a town in Sicily, was inspired to use donkeys as a vehicle to collect rubbish door to door. He found that this solution proved to be cheaper, more efficient and eco -friendly.

The so-called eco-donkeys costs on average 1269 USD  plus 2540 USD per year to maintain and a donkey’s average working life is of 20 years. Tash collecting vehicles instead cost 38000 USD  plus 10150 USD  of maintenance per year and have a working life of only 5 years.

RELATED: How we are killing Tunisian townsfolk with our phosphate addiction

Also, donkeys can walk along the tiny, inaccessible, cobbled streets, they hardly make any noise and they drink water, not petrol. The only inconvenience is their poop on the streets.

Castelbuono has successfully deployed half a dozen of these donkeys and has been maintaining the streets of this 10,000 person town clean, while providing employment to six former farmers.

What if Tunisia’s rural donkeys also started to be deployed in villages to collect rubbish door to door? Would it be an efficient and cheap solution?

Green prophet does some approximate calculations ( we have purposefully used high estimates). Maintaining and finding donkeys in Tunisia is easier and cheaper than in other Mediterranean countries. Consider that in Tunisia a donkey costs on average 380 USD, while maintaining a donkey costs 260 USD per year.

Tunisia’s waste by the numbers:

Tunisia’s Population: 10.9 million (2014)
Number of people served /donkey (based on Castelbuono’s experience): 1,666 persons/donkey
Cost of one eco-donkey in Tunisia: 380 USD + 260 USD /year = 640 USD
Wage of eco-agents (based on Tunisia’s monthly minimum wage of 190 USD/month )= 2280 USD
Total number of donkeys needed in Tunisia = 10.9 million/1666= 6540 donkeys
Total cost of donkeys + eco-agents = 19.09 million USD  (year 1), $16.61 million USD (year 2)

So to summarize, it would cost the Government (municipalities) approximately $19 million USD  in the first year  to collect and clean Tunisia up, without spending much on petrol, providing employment to  6,540 rural eco-agents and ensuring the durability of the project for at least 20 years.

How much does Tunisia currently spend on waste?

In 2009 for example, Tunisia produced 2.25 million tons of solid waste. The total approximate cost for collecting this, amounted to 69 million USD.

Over three years, the World Bank has lent Tunisia 50 million euros, The European Commission 41 million euros and the French Development Agency 15 million euros for waste management.

Simple calculations clearly show that donkeys can be a cheaper and more eco-friendly alternative to the systems currently in use.

Image of Donkey graffiti by Sunra / Tunisie taken by Aline Deschamps from Galerie Itinerrance Djerbahood

The post Why donkeys should be the new garbage truck appeared first on Green Prophet.

Today Redeyef, Tunisia, is quite a scene: it’s a decrepit French colonial houses are surrounded by mountains of black phosphate sand, radioactive water lakes and its inhabitants, the vast majority unemployed, walk around with yellowish brown toothy smiles.

The main sounds are that of shuddering chains transporting phosphate, and sirens marking the beginning and end of working hours. The average life expectancy here is 60 years, as lung and colonic cancer, leukemia, kidney stones, rheumatism and tooth loss chip away at people’s lives.

Phosphate is a perverse affair for Redeyef: it has become the life and death of its people.

Phosphate is used in agriculture as fertilizer, and animal feed, but in dishwasher detergent, in soft drinks, and also as flame retardants and to treat water in water softeners. It is used to make cereal, produce chicken, make cheese, and to make ice cream, pudding, canned and fresh vegetables. It’s virtually everywhere unless you produce your own organic food. We can imagine its economic value.

The region of Gafsa in Tunisia is found in one of the largest phosphate basins in the world where Compagnie des phosphates de Gafsa (CPG), the fifth largest phosphate producer in the world, produces 8 million tons per year.

Redeyef, a community in the region of Gafsa, finds itself battling daily with the side effects of phosphate production.

Green Prophet meets Abed, father of four children, and soon two more, has worked in the water treatment sector for six years. He explains that the principle phosphate related activity in Redeyef is the “humid treatment”,  that is washing, of phosphate which is bought here from all over the region by train.

This practice is highly polluting for two reasons: first the open sky black phosphate sand mountains, of which Redeyef is increasingly seeing itself surrounded by, blows in the desert winds entering into the homes, crops, mouths and lungs of its inhabitants.

Second, the water used to wash the phosphate is expelled into artificial lakes which infiltrates into the groundwater. This water, once used to water crops and drink, is now highly toxic, containing elevated concentrations of radioactive metals such as uranium and cadmium.

For years Redeyef has demanded to see some benefits from CPG’s activities. “All the money and richness goes to the capital and the state does nothing for the inhabitants of Redeyef. We are a forgotten town and region. Our land is sterile, our water is contaminated and we are sick, we have no hospitals to meet the demand of high cancer rates and our own citizens have to clean the streets. Who’s fault is this?” Abed asks.

Phosphate has become the death of self-sufficiency. With limited self-employment alternatives, phosphate has become the only other alternative for local employment- which CPG has not been able to fulfill.

In 2008 stifled protests and social movements erupted as CPG’s rigged employment procedures angered prospective workers, who have had enough of seeing political favoritism destroy the glimmers of hope for those who studied and sacrificed years of work to become more “employable”.

Redeyef, was the inedited site where those who had enough of Ben Ali’s regime began protesting. The “Jasmine revolution” in Tunisia, which snowballed into the so called Arab spring, began in Redeyef. Abed emphasizes “ the Tunisian revolution began here- it was a phosphate revolution before being a jasmine revolution.”

One could say that phosphate gave life to democracy in Tunisia.

Today the situation has not changed. Production halted for two months earlier this year because of protests, chefs promote for favoritism and not merit, the health of citizens is deteriorating, and unemployment rates are still amongst the highest in Tunisia. When talking about the future for Redeyef and Tunisia, Abed has little hope. He tells Green Prophet:  “I think there will be worse protests in the future because there is high unemployment and phosphate is the only source of income for the region.”

The post Tunisia’s phosphate town is dying over our addiction to phosphorus appeared first on Green Prophet.

As I enter Arafet Ben Marzou’s new  “office” at the top floor of an apartment building facing the lakes in Tunis, I am met with a very familiar feeling: that silicon valley, young brains, start-up feel. Only this time it is “ à la Tunisienne”, and I have to say, I prefer it.

Instead of leather armchairs there are traditional woven klims, the computer I see at the corner of the room is not an Apple, there are two open tents and two muddy bikes in the room, I can hear the Adhan (call to prayer), and I am not offered coke or coffee but a freshly made “citronnade”.

And so this is the office area where after his infamous yearlong cycle around the world, Arafet is cooking up a new project and has founded Exploralis. His vision and objective is to attract a “normal” citizen to review and experience social, environmental and cultural issues in Tunisia.

Arafet believes that “The process of attracting the normal citizen needs to generate a buzz and interest, which can be done by linking three factors: the environment , social and scientific with the media with adventure and passion,” he tells Green Prophet.

This recipe is the secret to Exploralis- a levitating initiative, which was baptized this month in its first adventure, a kayak crossing Tunisia’s biggest river: Medjerda.

This crossing was undertaken by Arafet and ornithologist-biodiversity expert Ridha Ouni where,  for 17 days, water samples (analyzed by the mobile laboratory of the minister of the environment), interviews and visual documentation were collected all along the river.

The adventure was interspersed with meeting young students and government offcials with the objective of highlighting river related issues like pollution, social concerns for those dependent on Medjerda’s water and the local eco-tourism potential.

Exploralis’s aim is to create a documentary and scientific research behind every “adventure” as way to sensitize Tunisia on its socio-environmental assets (see trailer below).

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bt5fJncfQd0]

With glimmering eyes Arafet gives hope for Tunisia’s eco-conscious future: “In my surrealist vision I see Exploralis as an organism that creates scientific research, documentation and curiosity while sharing beauty”.

For more information contact (exploralis.tunisia@gmail.com)

Images taken by Arafet Ben Merzou

The post Tunisia’s eco-conscious start-up: Exploralis appeared first on Green Prophet.

Climate Change, as we know by now and has been reconfirmed this year through the 5th IPCC Assessment report, will change our lives radically in the coming decades. There are several hot spot areas such as Bangladesh, the Sahel, The Alps, and the Maldives where due to their geographic position, landscape, and microclimate are already experiencing climate change impacts. One of these regions is Tunisia.

Although the discourse around climate change in Tunisia has been developing, its inclusion in the political agenda is limited, if non-existent. Tunisia is living an important political moment, which could be the turning point for its economy, more importantly it could be an important turning point for a greener economy, and as always, civil society will be the key motivator.

In 2013, Radhouane Addala and Samuel McNeil ventured across the country to interview, film and understand who and how climate change is impacting the Tunisian population today.

The result is an outstanding documentary, which delivers important messages to the Tunisian population, its government, and all the countries which confine our beautiful Saharan desert. How will increased droughts, stronger storms, moving deserts, rainfall losses of 15-30 % alter social, political, cultural and economic systems?

As Samuel explains “A Siege of Salt and Sand is an alarm bell and a bridge. We want to connect similarly climate-maligned communities across the globe to help forge solidarity in facing our era’s gravest danger. By visualizing the complexities of climate, marine and desert science and translating the struggles of scientists, policymakers, fishermen and farmers, we are trying to build a thick connection from Tunisia with the rest of the world.”

Aside from climate change related impacts, A Siege of Salt and Sand bought to light other important environmental issues and raises several questions. For example, the “black spots” of post-revolutionary Tunisia, where environmental regulation has been left behind and companies no longer feel obliged to follow rules that no one will enforce, or illegal industrial fishing in the Mediterranean, where fishermen in the Kerkennah islands south of Tunisia, are seeing their fish stocks depleted as “bottom trawling” destroys vital ecosystems offshore. Is this problem related to European companies benefiting from diminished controls of environmental regulations outside of European jurisdiction?

A Siege of Salt and Sand is currently in the post- production phase, Sam and Rad are crowdsourcing for the much needed financial support (and non – financial! ) to finish editing the arabic, english and french version of the documentary, as well as disseminating the information.

To support the project please donate through Indiegogo: A Siege of Salt and Sand

To watch the trailer : A Siege of Salt and Sand (Trailer)

The post Sand and Salt Siege film to highlight Tunisia’s eco struggles appeared first on Green Prophet.

Earlier this month several Tunisians in Hammamet, Sphax and Mahdia woke up to their beaches infested with dead fish and jelly fish, a beached whale in Tunis, off the coast of Sidi Bou Saïd was also carried to shore.

This event has generated an important debate, which confirms the need for investigative science and how little of that there is.

Some environmentalists sustain that the recent mass die-offs are not a coincidence, or a “natural” phenomenon, but a result of marine pollution.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WYQ7GiB9IA[/youtube]

Pollution off the Tunisian coasts is known to be a largely unregulated affair, particularly since the Jasmine revolution, an increasing number of unregulated coastal industries have been leaking toxic waste directly into the sea, furthermore the large majority of the commercial shipping traffic between the Suez Canal and Gibraltar passes off the Tunisian coasts, exerting significant marine ecosystem pressures from hydrocarbon fuel pollution, fumes and waste.

There are also talks on the connection between increasing covert hydraulic fracturing activities offshore between the touristic islands of Djerba and Kerkhennah and the concomitant increase in dead fish found along the coast. This connection is not incongruous, it is not the first time fracking is identified as the culprit in mystery mass die-offs, and given the strong toxic content of  chemical concoctions used in fracturing, a small leak can have enormous consequences especially in water where containment is nearly impossible.

On the other hand Hédia Hili, a veterinary doctor at the National Institute of marine science and technology, in an interview states that there is nothing abnormal about these phenomenons and it corresponds to annual events which are due to the proliferation of red jellyfish in the red sea seeping through from the Atlantic and Red sea, changes in the Mediterranean marine ecosystem, climate change and ocean warming. But are these not all anthropologically caused factors?

And there is a final, more esoteric explanation, some say this is an indication the world is going to end soon. 

When recently speaking to young Tunisian and Lebanese marine scientists it is apparent that the problem is not the lack of scientists willing to research on these issues, but it is the lack of funding. This is particularly true for the Mediterranean countries who are experiencing economic downturn, and therefore cuts in research and development. The Mediterranean risks becoming a soup of environmental disasters, with little investigative science to explain such disasters.

It is especially alarming to read several articles where the discourse explaining mass die-offs fall into the “it’s normal”  or “It’s a mystery” scheme.

Is the human race starting to refute the responsibility for the consequences of its actions?

Image of dead fish on the coast from Shutterstock

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