In 2012, the world’s airlines transported three billion people, emitting 689 million tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere. To mitigate the aviation industry’s future environmental impact, Boeing, Etihad Airways and the Masdar Institute of Technology are working on a groundbreaking new jet fuel made from desert plants fed with saltwater.
According to Islam, being breastfed is a right for all children. Now Abu Dhabi has passed a clause in their Child Rights law that requires all women to breastfeed their children – up to the age of two.
Looking for some good reads about the environment and the Middle East? Then click yourself into the University of California Press (UCP) e-books collection (link here) offering free access to hundreds of books published by UCP and other academic presses.
Archeologists have deciphered what they believe to be the oldest Hebrew texts originating from the Holy City of Jerusalem: “the wine was cheap”, is the meaning of the basic inscription, illustrated above. It is also believed that the wine was made for the “riffraff”, the hard workers in the region, and for soldiers.
This is just one reason why I don’t allow pesticides to come near my home and children: two children have died, and two more are in critical condition after a Jerusalem exterminator applied the pesticide aluminum phosphide in a Jerusalem apartment.
When the Middle East eco-city developers from Masdar approached David Ardill, Partner and Design Director at Sheppard Robson, to design Siemens’ new corporate headquarters at Masdar City, the architect said it was the most challenging brief he had ever encountered. Green Prophet visited the building this week for an exclusive tour.
Solar energy projects for developing countries in Africa and the Middle East MENA Region have often been put on the backburner due to financial considerations as well as lack of attention by local government bodies. Whether it has involved sophisticated solar “farms” or small solar devices for barefoot Bedouin women, more attention is being focused to bring solar energy to poor people to light up their world.
When I think of a meal based on a light protein – something quick to make and yet satisfying – I think of fish. Have you ever considered fish luxuriously drizzled with tahini?
Can there be more Masdars? Can this experimental eco-city be replicated in other Middle Eastern or North African countries that don’t have Abu Dhabi’s immense oil wealth? Green Prophet put this question to Anthony Mallows, Director of Masdar City, and Chris Chi Lon Wan, City Design Manager, during a recent roundtable discussion.
Jordan is cleaning up its act, at least in terms of laundry detergent, with a project entitled Concentrate for the Environment. The voluntary, industry-led initiative aims to reduce the negative environmental impact of powdered laundry soap. Seems the soap industry excels at greenwashing; this looks like corporate cost-shaving spun into environmental (fool’s) gold.
Major changes in how the planet’s marine resources are managed and used are needed to safeguard global food security and ensure the wellbeing of coastal and island countries, the United Nation’s FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva told a group of high level policymakers meeting today in Abu Dhabi.
“We cannot keep using marine and aquatic resources as if they were endless. And we cannot keep using our oceans as a waste pool,” he said in remarks made at the Blue Economy Summit (19-20 January, Abu Dhabi), attended by heads of state, environment and fisheries ministers, and other key stakeholders.
Serious threats to ocean health such as pollution, overfishing, and altered weather and rising sea levels resulting from climate change must be tackled in earnest – starting now — argued FAO’s chief executive.
“The health of our planet itself, our health and food security, depends on how we treat the blue world,” he said.
Time to act
On average, nearly 17 percent of animal protein consumed worldwide comes from fisheries and aquaculture, and in many small island developing states the figure is much higher.
At the same time, the livelihoods 12 percent of the world’s population depend on fisheries and aquaculture, mainly in the developing world.
But 30 percent of world fish stocks are estimated to be overexploited, depleted or recovering from depletion, with economic losses in marine fisheries resulting from poor management, inefficiencies, and overfishing adding up to $50 billion per year, FAO studies show.
And now climate change is posing new challenges to populations who rely on the oceans, by modifying the distribution and productivity of marine and freshwater species, affecting biological processes, and altering food webs.
Weather changes due to climate change are also taking a toll on many ocean-reliant communities, while the threat of rising sea levels is poised to have major impacts, in particular for small island developing states (SIDS). (Learn more about the challenges facing small island developing states, and how they are organizing to meet them.)
The last thirty years have seen some 80 different commitments on dealing with various ocean threats promulgated at the global level, Graziano da Silva noted, adding: “We not only need to commit, we need to act.”
A blue economy
The concept of a “blue economy” that came out of the 2012 Rio+20 Conference will have an important role to play in achieving the post-2015 global sustainable development goals, Graziano da Silva said during his remarks.
The blue economy model emphasizes conservation and sustainable management, based on the premise that healthy ocean ecosystems are more productive and represent the only way to ensure sustainable ocean-based economies. It also aims to ensure that small island developing states and developing world coastal states equitably benefit from their marine resources.
To support a shift to this new approach, FAO is establishing a new Blue Growth Initiative, through which the Organization will assist countries in developing and implementing blue economy and growth agendas.
The initiative will aim to foster partnerships and act as a catalyst for policy development, investment and innovation in support of food security, poverty reduction, and the sustainable management of aquatic resources.
Fresh water shortage issues are virtually normal now in the Eastern Mediterranean, especially in Cyprus, which has worse water shortage problems than Israel, Syria and Lebanon. The water shortage situation in Cyprus has gotten so bad that lakes are going dry (see photo).
Do you like to eat imported sea fish, especially those like supposedly banned Bluefin tuna? Following the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear plant meltdown disaster, many fish caught in Pacific Ocean waters near Japan’s most well known nuclear power plant have been found to contain abnormally high amounts of radiation.
Ormat Technologies, one of the world’s leading geothermal green energy power plant companies, has already tapped the earth’s geothermal energy sources in Europe, the USA, Russia, Indonesia, Central and South America, and a 100 Megawatt plant in New Zealand.
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