Nina Rahal-Lott, is a trained architect who wants to transform the Badawi refugee camp in Lebanon from an ‘environmental catastrophe’ into a green haven Born and raised in Beirut and trained as an architect, Nina Rahal-Lott is a women with a vision. After witnessing the dire conditions that Palestinian refugees live in across Lebanon, she […]
Natural gas drilling near Cyprus could affect lucrative tourism industry says its commerce minister. Drilling for natural gas by Israel in the eastern Mediterranean has already resulted in undersea territorial disputes between Israel and Lebanon, resulting in the United Nations deciding to mediate the dispute between the two countries. Besides the environmental concerns of this […]
We speak to the Lebanese eco-campaigner Wael Hmaidan about corporate funding of green organisations in the Middle East and finding solutions In a previous post, I posed some questions about green groups in the Middle East receiving funding from not-so-green corporations. Is it a good thing if they are working together to protect nature? Or […]
200 Beirut residents reminded others that cities can (and should) be green. Fed up with the absence of greenery in Beirut, 200 residents of the city gathered this past Saturday in a decidedly concrete Sassine Square to collectively say that they wanted to “Green the Grey”. Beirut has definitely been taking steps towards being “green” […]
Foster & Partners broke ground on their first project in Lebanon. This new tower will also be the first in Beirut to have green roofs. The 3Beirut tower in Lebanon will be the first Foster & Partners development in that country. As fans of something a little more earthy, like the mud brick building entrusted […]
Batroun is an outpost of beauty in Lebanon. The next generation of environmental activists want to make sure it stays that way. Georges “Junior” Daou belongs to the next generation of Lebanese. A long time nature-lover, he has devoted himself full time to rejecting toxic waste in Beirut, consistent oil spills that degrade the Mediterranean […]
Who says the Middle East can’t be sustainable? Project Lebanon has it all: minced biofuels, wind turbines, outdoor solar lights and more. All kinds of cool cleantech innovations geared specifically towards the Middle East and Egypt will be on display at Project Lebanon 2011. Today is the opening day of the International Construction and Environmental […]
Telling Mediterraneans not to eat cucumbers is like taking baguettes away from Parisians. At least 10 people have died, and one thousand more expected to be ill from eating tainted organic cucumbers and other fresh produce consumed in Germany. Contaminated with a rare and deadly form of E.coli, a bacteria, the organic cucumbers are causing […]
Contemporary architects in the Middle East revert to ancient techniques to cool and light new buildings. The earliest known Mashrabiya dates to 12th century Baghdad, Iraq. A special architectural feature that provides passive cooling both in and outside of the building, it was particularly popular in Iraq during the 1920s and 1930s. Unfortunately, the Al Rasheed […]
Environmental and human rights go hand in hand in Lebanon. Winning recognition from the Guinness Book of Records last October for the world’s largest hand painted cloth, 12,000 Lebanese joined hands for environmental and social peace. Spearheaded by Lebanon’s Red Cross and Timol Paints, 7,000 volunteers and 5,000 concerned citizens pledged to observe tolerance and […]
The three winners from the Middle East/MENA region are Tunisia, Bahrain and Qatar in new survey on tourism trends. The recently released 2011 “Travel and Tourism Competitiveness”report by the World Economic Forum, in co-operation with Booz & Company, reveals some interesting dynamics in the global tourism industry, including a shift to the East, with Central and […]
Chafic Abi Abdallah used to work in the hospitality industry, but grew weary of sitting in front of the computer for twelve hours a day. So he set out on a trip to Southeast Asia to clear his mind and dream up more hands-on and community-oriented job prospects. During his journey throughout India, Cambodia and […]
Smoking has become the norm in downtown Beirut. Last month, a group of women activists posing as pregnant women with faces covered with masks, staged a protest in Downtown Beirut against the delay by a parliamentary committee to finalize a long awaited law to ban smoking in closed public spaces and end unregulated cigarette advertisements, […]
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 […]
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 […]