Rachel Jacobson shares the story behind protecting this beautiful view from “Big Oil.” Last year a small group of people accidentally discovered that Israel Energy Initiatives (IEI), backed by Rupert Murdoch, Dick Cheney and a powerful American oil conglomerate, intended to explore their land for oil shale – potentially a very destructive project. David de […]
Abandoned Fukushima “dead zone” dog: its face says it all! The radiation, sadly, lingers in its fur. With escalating rates of radiation, and an upgrade to 7 in terms of severity, it’s not only humans who have suffered from Japan’s 9 magnitude earthquake, tsunami and radiation leakage in northeastern Japan. Thousands of dogs, cats, and […]
As its grip on the Nile river slips away, Egypt reframes the tone of its negotiations. Egypt has announced a final effort to re-negotiate the terms of the Cooperative Framework Agreement which apportions water from the Nile River to various basin countries. Since 1929, Egypt has held a near-monopoly on the water, but last year […]
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 offer a variety of useful workshops in permaculture, off-grid living, sustainable building, and organic farming. […]
How can we stop shark finning in the United Arab Emirates?
Is a bird death “aflockalypse” being caused by ionospheric experimentation? Strange mass bird and fish kill-offs. Then 152 dolphins get “zapped” in the Straits of Hormuz and 200 cows die suddenly in the American State of Wisconsin. News reports some 7000 buffalo dying in Vietnam seem to indicate that something unnatural may be causing all […]
Saudi researchers develop a new model for predicting flash floods in the Middle East. They cripple cities like Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, and take lives each year in the Middle East: flash floods come without warning, and are hard to predict (check out our flash flood survival guide), but now Arab scientists at the King […]
The animals rights organisation ‘Animals Lebanon’ has called on the government to deal with stray dogs in a more humane manner The lack of animals rights in the Middle East is an issue we have discussed here at Green Prophet. We reported on the horses left to die during the revolution in Egypt, the poor […]
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 told Almasry Alyoum that his love of nature sprouted in a fishing village along the […]
What’s weirder that eating slimy fish eggs? Farming them in Abu Dhabi’s desert. Because we have had a multiple-decade infatuation with eating slimy fish eggs, not to mention our obsession with oil and resultant pollution of their habitat, more than three quarters of sturgeon species are critically endangered. As a result, the global supply of […]
New parks will give relief to Tel Aviv’s crowded beaches, and save the environment! Israel’s announcement that it will create a new network of land and sea parks in order to protect its coastal escarpment is a boon for beach-lovers too. A harbinger of what might happen should the Gaza artificial island project take root, […]
We speak to Ibrahim Al Zu’bi from the Emirates Divers Association about why the ban on shark finning in the UAE hasn’t worked and what ordinary people can do to stop the horrific trade In 2008, shark finning in the United Arab Emirates was banned. For many environmentalists and conservationists this was a time to […]
“Szzzzz, c’mon, honey; just take a little bitty bite of this delicious fruit” This question has been asked by much of Mankind ever since the dawn of the Creation: was the snake that enticed Eve and Adam to eat fruit from the Tree of Knowledge really environmentally unfriendly? And is it fair to blame the […]
Environmentalists condemn Israeli plans to build an artificial island off the coast of Gaza to house a port, an airport and to encourage tourism It seems that it is not only Dubai that harbours ridiculous dreams of artificial islands– Israel does too. Israeli minister for transport Yisreal Katz recently revealed that plans to construct an […]
At this time of ecological uncertainty, can we really justify $200,000 adrenalin hits for the rich? In 2010, according to the World Hunger Organization, 925 million of our fellow human beings went hungry. Meanwhile, untold millions (billions?) of US dollars are being spent to develop the Virgin Galactic Spaceship, of which the BBC has been […]
This art installation by Matthew Laws & Hall Watts is an accurate portrayal of what our 2030 water consumption will look like. Few places are as water stressed as the Middle East. The Gulf countries have to live with the reality that their very existence depends on desalination, the Levant is scarcely better off, and […]
Forty green tree pythons headed for the UAE were confiscated in Indonesia over the weekend. Despite Interpol’s tough stance against trafficking, traffickers have no trouble finding customers in the Middle East. Karl Amman talked to us earlier this year about private wildlife collections in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and other Middle Eastern countries and last year […]
Natural phenomena, HAARP experiments or an alien death ray? Some 152 dophins boiled alive with conspiracy theorists pointing to HAARP. You may think you have seen everything after Arwa’s article dealing with the slaughter of sharks in Persian Gulf waters off Dubai. Think twice, dear readers, because you haven’t! There’s something even more sinister and […]
Carmel fires at their height – “hell on earth” Rehabilitation of the severely fire damaged Carmel Forest is one of main topics being discussed in the week long World Leadership Conference of Israel’s Jewish National Fund being held in Jerusalem. The annual conference for leaders in one of the country’s most important conservation and forestry […]
If we do not arrest the current rate of overfishing, our oceans could be depleted of fish by 2048. Following Arwa’s recent blog on shark finning in the United Arab Emirates – a cruel and destructive practice that produces the so-called delicacy that is shark fin soup, and another story about the turtle that pooped […]
Get your fill of tasty, local food at the Sebastia Guesthouse in Palestine- one of many great guesthouses in Palestine If you want to get off the beaten track, eat great food and meet locals in Palestine than a stay at a Palestinian guesthouse could be the thing for you. Rather than staying with huge, […]
Ramallah celebrated Palestine’s first environment festival March 19-21 2011 This past weekend, Ramallah celebrated what is believed to be Palestine’s first dedicated environment festival. Large-scale ‘green’ development has been making big news in Palestine recently. But this event was on a much more personal scale. According to organisers from community support organisation Juhoud, the Basateen […]
A marine turtle in Florida passed 74 foreign objects over a period of one month. Conference in Honolulu tries to get a grip on plastic pollution. Let’s not mince our words: plastic pollution sucks. The source of David de Rothschild’s inspiration to sail the Pacific on a lumbering catamaran made from 12, 500 plastic bottles, […]
These sick baby turtles covered in barnacles are two of many turtles received for treatment in Dubai. Scientists are puzzled over the record number of mostly endangered Hawksbill turtles being admitted to the Dubai Turtle Rehabilitation Project. The 210 turtles that have been brought in for treatment significantly exceeds the numbers received in previous years. […]
Cycling holidays are tempting travellers to eco-friendly ways of seeing the Middle East In recent months Green Prophet has reported on all aspects of cycling in the Middle East, from new resources for visitors wanting to visit the Middle East by bicycle, to calls for a Critical Mass-style ‘cycling revolution’ in Cairo. In line with […]