Image of flooding in Fares by Abu El Fadl, Egypt Independent Port Said and Cairo have been dominating Egyptian headlines of late, while Fares, a small agricultural community 75 km north of Aswan, has gone completely unnoticed despite enduring a humanitarian tragedy of epic proportions. Since 2009, after DanaGas began to drill pilot hydraulic fracturing wells […]
The Egyptian government announced earlier this week that a plan to bridge the distance between Egypt and Saudi Arabia across the Gulf of Aqaba is going to become reality in the very near future. A longstanding proposal previously rejected by former President Hosni Mubarak, a bridge linking the Sinai Peninsula and Saudi Arabia is expected […]
Jordan’s Ministry of Social Development just approved the first coalition of the kingdom’s environmental protection societies. An underlying message of the Arab uprisings is that there’s strength in numbers and power in unity. The voice of Jordan’s disparate nature and environmental entities is about to change, when they join up as the kingdom’s new Environmental Societies Union (ESU). Members will […]
There’s a lot of mingling afoot at conventions, and news of resulting hook-ups (including those we made there) at last week’s Abu Dhabi World Future Energy Summit are starting to hit the press. Masdar, Abu Dhabi’s renewable energy company and host of Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week (ADSW) has signed a framework agreement with Jordan to help […]
The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) are expected to bring 3.5GW of solar capacity online by 2015: Saudi Arabia and Turkey lead the way. A new report published by Green Tech Media (GTM) Research pins the surge from today’s near-negligible production on rapidly rising energy demand spurred by MENA economic expansion, population growth, and […]
It was about a decade in the making: without much fanfare the World Bank has released a report stating that the Dead Sea – Red Sea Canal project (also called the Red Dead Conduit) will work. The basic idea is to take salty water from the Red Sea, pump it up to a channel, desalinate it […]
Using words like catastrophe, calamity and critical, Jordan’s Queen Rania, the Presidents of France and Argentina and other world leaders sounded the clarion yesterday morning at the opening ceremony of the 6th World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi. Albeit a somber gathering that laid out the full weight of our shared responsibility to reverse […]
Green Prophet is on a VIP media tour in Abu Dhabi. We hope to meet Jordan’s beautiful Queen Rania; or at least catch a glimpse of her today as she pushes a sustainability message. Queen Rania Al Abdullah of Jordan has a history of environmental stewardship. She will join French President François Hollande as keynote […]
Abu Dhabi has the world’s 5th highest proven oil reserve and the 6th highest reserve of natural gas. This is a hydrocarbon-based economy that – at first glance – should have no incentive to reduce their carbon footprint. And yet the United Arab Emirates as a whole seems to be taking climate change a lot […]
Turkey has been importing condensate from the Khor Mor gas field in Iraqi Kurdistan since October, with daily shipments now reaching 15,000 barrels. Until recently, bowing to the Iraqi central government’s claim that it controls all oil within the country, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) only exported oil through a pipeline controlled by Baghdad. But […]
If you are among the 70 or more bloggers who submitted an entry to Masdar’s blogging competition, or simply want to know what it takes to impress the jury of one of the leading promoters of sustainable technology and renewable energy, then this post might appeal to you. Professor of public and environmental affairs at […]
Amid some of the worst flooding seen in the Middle East in decades and increasingly dire reports about climate change, Masdar will host the sixth annual World Future Energy Summit (WFES) in Abu Dhabi next week. We’ll be joining 30,000 other delegates at Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week, which includes the International Water Summit (IWS) from […]
Iran is gagging – on sanctions and deadly pollution. Finally, after months of denial, the country’s oil minister Rostam Qasemi acknowledged that petroleum sales are down by 40 percent after western sanctions that prohibit certain international transactions have stunted trade. In February, all energy, shipping and shipbuilding enterprises will be blacklisted as well, the New […]
What a great way to start 2013: the Committee of Heads of Environmental Sciences (CHES) and the Institution of Environmental Sciences (IES) accredited Qatar University’s BSc and MSc Environmental Sciences programs. This is not only a first for the Arab world, but it is also the first time these leading institutions have accredited any such program […]
Two to three thousand refugees flee Syria every day. Exhausted from traveling with what little they own and devastated by the many losses they have incurred along the way – their home, their country, every shred of security they ever knew and a shocking number of family members – they pour into bordering countries. The […]