Who’s got the wind in the Middle East? Morocco and Egypt have the biggest wind power plants, but don’t discount Iraq, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Wind power has taken a backseat to solar power across the Middle East and North Africa, but there are still some ambitious projects in wind power […]
Water scarcity is not a new dilemma in the Middle East, but as populations grow, desertification spreads and temperatures creep higher, leaders in the region are understandably concerned for the future. Poorer countries like Yemen or the Hashemite kingdom of Jordan are particularly vulnerable, while oil-rich nations can at least use their wealth to explore new […]
It’s real-life Hunger Games, and the Middle East is among the busiest land-grabbers. In the last decade, nearly half a billion acres of land – eight times the area of Great Britain – were sold or leased in transnational deals, according to a 2012 report published by the Land Matrix project, a coalition of research […]
Kick off the new year with Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week to be held January 13 through 17. The world’s leading symposium committed to promoting the advancement of alternative energy and efficient, clean technologies, Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week 2013 is expected to attract 30,000 participants from over 150 countries. Hosted by Masdar, Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week provides a […]
Movie stars shone on Abu Dhabi red carpets, where the curtain rose on a pair of green films connected to the Middle East. This year’s Abu Dhabi film festival featured two green-themed films aimed at raising awareness of a decidedly un-Hollywood subject: global waste management. Both movies, Trashed and Polluting Paradise, were sponsored by sustainable […]
Tires, plastics, and other types of solid waste will soon be converted into energy and other products at a new Israel mega recycling plant. Photo: Haaretz/Michal Fattal Israel’s garbage dumps and landfills are often referred to as large, unsightly “garbage mountains” such as the Hiriya garbage mound near Tel Aviv. With the Hiriya site now […]
The Fisker Karma electric hybrid sport: Not everybody’s car at $98,000 Electric cars cruising the roads of the Middle East and elsewhere in the world have been frequent Green Prophet clean technology articles ever since Better Place’s founder Shai Agassi launched his unique electric car network concept back in early 2008. Since then, a number […]
A handful of new lakes popping up in the vast and formidable Arabian desert are creating whole new ecosystems and attracting rare bird species that breed among the dunes. And, technically, it’s not a naturally-occurring phenomenon. NPR traveled to the United Arab Emirates to witness firsthand one such lake that rose 35 feet in the […]
Camel milk and dates are now bona fide links in the international gourmet food chain. And while this bodes well for Middle East economics, is the associated environmental news happy too? I questioned this last summer in Malahide, a tiny Irish seaside village where I used to live. I was staying with friends and their child […]
You can get vending machines for the strangest things in the Arab Gulf – even for gold bars. But thinking in a greener direction, the United Arab Emirates is the second country in the world to adopt light bulb and used battery recycling machines to the public. Five reverse vending machines are being set up […]
Abu Dhabi’s stellar efforts to raise green performance across industry sectors position that Gulf state as regional leader in both conceiving sustainable solutions, and more critically, setting them in action. There are some more famous projects like the multi-million dollar zero-energy city Masdar. But this is just the tip of the bucket. Read on for […]
The Bee’ah School of Environment (BSOE), an education initiative created by a United Arab Emirates-based environmental and waste management company, recently announced it is expanding its networks in the eastern and central region of Sharjah, engaging with 160,000 students in over 200 schools. The BSOE envisions an expansion of this initiative, hoping to spread throughout […]
Established in the lead up to the COP18 Doha negotiations, the Arab Youth Climate Movement brings together over 20 campaigners from 15 Middle East/North Africa countries As the saying goes, there is power in numbers. So it’s great to see environmental organisations across MENA come together to “create a more sustainable, prosperous, meaningful, just, and […]
It is illegal to catch sharks from the beginning of January to the end of April in the United Arab Emirates and yet thousands of them are landed during that time. Speaking to a delegation of international conservationists at the four day Shark Conservation Arabia workshop in Dubai, marine biologist Rima Jabado explained that during visits […]
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) economic capital, Dubai, has reaffirmed its committment to sustainable energy and the environment as it pushes forward on massive growth projects. Dubai’s ruler and UAE’s Vice-President and Prime Minister Mohamed bin Rashid al-Maktoum said that as the city continues to develop, the environment and clean energy prospects remain at the top […]