Jordan’s hosting of forced migrants is overburdening already stressed water resources. Humanitarianism has an unanticipated knock-on to fresh water supplies, as Jordan is starting to realize. Syrian refugees harbored in kingdom are draining the desert nation’s scarce water resources, reports Lebanon’s Daily Star. This presents a new setback for Jordan, one of the world’s most […]
Experts are calling on Israel to completely enclose its borders with a barrier to keep out ‘floods of climate refugees’ Around two months ago, a small piece of research carried out by the University of Buffalo found that in environmental disasters, humans tend to make things worse. Rather than getting together to resolve issues, the […]
When we first learned about the 120,000 square meter artificial lagoon in Sharm el Sheikh designed to be the largest of its kind in the world, we wondered whether it would lift off or crumble in failure as so many of Egypt’s grand projects have done. We need wonder no more since World Architecture News […]
Whisked away down the toilet and into our waterways, we are losing stocks of phosphorus and the result can be very scary. Looking for something new to worry about? Phosphorus hops onto the list of rapidly diminishing natural resources: a dangerous dwindling of something that probably never crossed your mind. Production will likely peak in our […]
WEwood watches are the brainchild of an Italian shoemaker who loves watches and two entrepreneurs who are eager to restore the earth we devoured in just 250 years; together they have grown a sustainable, avant-garde business that has expanded its reach from Florence to Los Angeles and most recently to Cairo. Each unique piece is […]
Today Egyptians stood in line for hours to vote in the first real, competitive presidential election in the country’s history. And our favorite bakery, the only one in Egypt to recycle their own packaging into attractive notebooks, bookmarks and other stationary, is encouraging voters to play a role in the future of their homeland. As […]
She might travel on a budget, but this backpacker can spend double the amount of money of the average non-budget traveller, and she’ll probably have more fun. It’s easy to look down on the lowly backpackers when you are a country looking to earn lots of income from tourism. Many Middle Eastern countries rely seriously […]
This wood waste may not look like fuel for a solar power plant, but it soon could be.
A dynamic young Egyptian firm has won an $11,000 innovation prize for an off-grid, solar-powered water pump. Judges of the first HCT-Wharton Innovation Tournament held last week in Abu Dhabi were impressed by KarmSolar because their design could easily have a high impact on great numbers of people, reduce dependency on diesel, and it would […]
The seventh oil spill in the Red Sea since September, 2011 has gone virtually unnoticed. The most recent spill in Gamsha Bay, which has been attributed to General Petroleum Company, has received no additional press coverage after it was reported last week in Egypt Independent. Both an onshore and offshore leak, it is particularly hazardous as […]
An Islamic bank in Jordan, Sanabel, has bought up over a quarter of a Congo forest for ‘sustainable projects’ When I first read about the acquisition of 500,000 hectares of high value forest in the Democratic Republic of Congo by an Islamic investment bank in Jordan, I thought one thing: land grab. Over the last […]
Visit Autopooling.com to car pool in Lebanon. It is often true that through hardship people naturally become more resourceful. Carpooling first became prominent in the United States as a rationing tactic during World War II. It returned in the mid 1970s due to the 1973 oil crisis and the 1979 energy crisis and it has […]
Does goes on a mission to find out what typifies an Egyptian environmentalist. A few months ago Egypt was named the greenest country in the Middle-East by a Yale group, even topping neighbouring Israel. It even turned out to be one of the best improving countries in the world. If you ever visited it, this might sound […]
Manufactured landscapes and Toskha, a planned city to create a second Nile Valley in Egypt The Middle East is no stranger to construction failures. This page on Arabia Business gives an almanac of such failures. What is interesting about this list is the presence of some substantially big names. Failure of mega construction projects in […]
Conservationists in Egypt are worried about the environmental impact of large-scale solar projects in the desert It seems renewables are taking a little bit of a bashing at the moment. First research emerges that wind turbines may be contributing to a temperature rise in the area, and now environmental campaigners in Egypt are calling for […]