Opioid drugs including oxycodone, heroin and fentanyl have fueled an ever-worsening epidemic in the US. And after giant events in New Orleans they are popping up in the wastewater.
Neom, a bombastic collection of futuristic cities and resorts, has flopped as Saudi oil prices roll back reality. The Saudi plan of hosting the 2029 Asian games to be held at Trojena, a ski report in the desert, has been cancelled.
A large sperm whale has washed ashore on Zikim Beach in southern Israel, marking only the eighth documented case of its kind along the country’s Mediterranean coast since monitoring began.
Opioid drugs including oxycodone, heroin and fentanyl have fueled an ever-worsening epidemic in the US. And after giant events in New Orleans they are popping up in the wastewater.
Neom, a bombastic collection of futuristic cities and resorts, has flopped as Saudi oil prices roll back reality. The Saudi plan of hosting the 2029 Asian games to be held at Trojena, a ski report in the desert, has been cancelled.
A large sperm whale has washed ashore on Zikim Beach in southern Israel, marking only the eighth documented case of its kind along the country’s Mediterranean coast since monitoring began.
Opioid drugs including oxycodone, heroin and fentanyl have fueled an ever-worsening epidemic in the US. And after giant events in New Orleans they are popping up in the wastewater.
Neom, a bombastic collection of futuristic cities and resorts, has flopped as Saudi oil prices roll back reality. The Saudi plan of hosting the 2029 Asian games to be held at Trojena, a ski report in the desert, has been cancelled.
A large sperm whale has washed ashore on Zikim Beach in southern Israel, marking only the eighth documented case of its kind along the country’s Mediterranean coast since monitoring began.
Opioid drugs including oxycodone, heroin and fentanyl have fueled an ever-worsening epidemic in the US. And after giant events in New Orleans they are popping up in the wastewater.
Neom, a bombastic collection of futuristic cities and resorts, has flopped as Saudi oil prices roll back reality. The Saudi plan of hosting the 2029 Asian games to be held at Trojena, a ski report in the desert, has been cancelled.
A large sperm whale has washed ashore on Zikim Beach in southern Israel, marking only the eighth documented case of its kind along the country’s Mediterranean coast since monitoring began.
Opioid drugs including oxycodone, heroin and fentanyl have fueled an ever-worsening epidemic in the US. And after giant events in New Orleans they are popping up in the wastewater.
Neom, a bombastic collection of futuristic cities and resorts, has flopped as Saudi oil prices roll back reality. The Saudi plan of hosting the 2029 Asian games to be held at Trojena, a ski report in the desert, has been cancelled.
A large sperm whale has washed ashore on Zikim Beach in southern Israel, marking only the eighth documented case of its kind along the country’s Mediterranean coast since monitoring began.
Opioid drugs including oxycodone, heroin and fentanyl have fueled an ever-worsening epidemic in the US. And after giant events in New Orleans they are popping up in the wastewater.
Neom, a bombastic collection of futuristic cities and resorts, has flopped as Saudi oil prices roll back reality. The Saudi plan of hosting the 2029 Asian games to be held at Trojena, a ski report in the desert, has been cancelled.
A large sperm whale has washed ashore on Zikim Beach in southern Israel, marking only the eighth documented case of its kind along the country’s Mediterranean coast since monitoring began.
Opioid drugs including oxycodone, heroin and fentanyl have fueled an ever-worsening epidemic in the US. And after giant events in New Orleans they are popping up in the wastewater.
Neom, a bombastic collection of futuristic cities and resorts, has flopped as Saudi oil prices roll back reality. The Saudi plan of hosting the 2029 Asian games to be held at Trojena, a ski report in the desert, has been cancelled.
A large sperm whale has washed ashore on Zikim Beach in southern Israel, marking only the eighth documented case of its kind along the country’s Mediterranean coast since monitoring began.
Opioid drugs including oxycodone, heroin and fentanyl have fueled an ever-worsening epidemic in the US. And after giant events in New Orleans they are popping up in the wastewater.
Neom, a bombastic collection of futuristic cities and resorts, has flopped as Saudi oil prices roll back reality. The Saudi plan of hosting the 2029 Asian games to be held at Trojena, a ski report in the desert, has been cancelled.
A large sperm whale has washed ashore on Zikim Beach in southern Israel, marking only the eighth documented case of its kind along the country’s Mediterranean coast since monitoring began.
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 of the city’s agenda. In the preface to “The Business Year: Dubai 2012” al-Maktoum again confirmed his desire to see economic growth be in line with sustainable environmental practices and the promotion of clean energy.
Shams 1 will displace 175,000 tons of CO2 per year and its power output will be enough to power 20,000 homes.
Abu Dhabi’s push into clean energy is to get a massive boost by the end of the year with the Shams 1 Concentrated Solar Power plant going live in the emirate and will begin supplying solar power to residents in the city. Commissioned by MASDAR, Spain’s Abengoa Solar and France’s Total S.A.the $500 million USD plant will have a capacity of 100 megawatts of electricity, which the company said in announcing the plant’s functionality this past week, should be enough power to run 20,000 homes. Using solar parabolic trough technology is the largest such plant in the world and first of its kind solar power plant in the Middle East North Africa region.
PLUG-In Hebron is a dynamic new urban renewal project for the conflict-shorn West Bank city. Following years of what the designers call “reciprocal violence,” the Israeli military split Hebron into two separate zones. The latter, H2, which is under Israeli jurisdiction, contains the old city. Which means that the Palestinians have been isolated from an important aspect of their urban identity.
Building Sumud’s local partner has worked to reinvigorate residential and sacred spaces, but now they propose to renovate a traditional Mamluk building in the old city into a three-level civic and social center. It will be solar-powered and built with local, renewable materials, although great care will be taken to protect the vernacular architecture. And it will include a modular rooftop hub draped in patterned Hebronite fabric.
We speak to Egyptian campaigner Sarah Rifaat about the environmental movement and why bureaucracy and corruption are still the biggest barriers to change in Egypt
Sarah Rifaat, like many people in Egypt, suffered from childhood asthma caused by the high levels of pollution in her city. What Sarah did differently when she grew up however, is refuse to accept this as the norm. Sarah’s asthma was her first lesson in the importance of a healthy and sustainable lifestyle which led her down the path of environmental campaigning. Today, she works with 350.org as the Arab world co-ordinator and is also part of a new Arab Youth Climate Movement. I caught up with Sarah to find out more about her work and what she would change if she was Egyptian president for a day.
Illegal logging is not only killing the planet – it is supporting organised crime too
Back in 2010 we reported on the case of Moroccan activist Mohammed Attaoui who was facing imprisonment for his stance against illegal logging. Living in the Moroccan Atlas Mountains, Attaoui insisted that ‘mafia-style’ corruption was behind illegal logging which threatened the protected cedar of Morocco. Weeks after publishing his expose Attaoui was arrested on trumped-up charges and given a two year sentence. Now, a new report by the UN states that around 90% of all illegal logging in tropical countries in the Amazon basin, Central Africa and South East Asia may be supporting organised crime.
The recently renovated Rabat Zoo in Morocco claims to have bred three new Barbary lion cubs in captivity. The larger cousin of southern Africa’s plains lions, Barbary lions were slaughtered en masse in fights with gladiators in order to demonstrate the superiority of humans over nature and finally the last wild individual was shot by a French hunter in 1922.
However, Moroccan Sultan Mohammed V, grandfather to the current king, had a private collection of lions that were gifts of allegiance from nobles and peasant hunters. Using ex-situ breeding methods, the zoo reportedly used the genetic material from these animals to build up a captive population of 30 individuals, including Layth, Rose and Rosa, who were born in December, 2011.
Eco Future is an engaging interactive exhibit on Al Saadiyat Island that teaches children the ABCs of going green in Abu Dhabi. Partially modeled after the Emirate’s own long term sustainability plans, the exhibit features a series of games that promote virtual decision-making about real-world issues such as green building, healthy living, and moderate water and energy consumption.
Polluting Paradise,the latest film by Turkish-German director Fatih Akin, documents the disgusting damage caused by a garbage dump near the Black Sea village of Çamburnu.
Ten years ago, Turkish government authorities decided to transform an abandoned copper mine in northeastern Turkey into the biggest landfill in the eastern Black Sea region. Despite promises that the waste would be carefully contained, it began leaching into the surrounding soil, water, and air almost immediately. From the beginning, the nearby fishing and tea-cultivating village of Çamburnu has mounted a strong opposition to the development.
Since it began to be filled, pervading the air with a terrible stench and turning local streams brown and foamy, the locals have grown more desperate.
At stake is not only their pristine environment — the pure air, verdant forests, and bountiful rivers of the lush Black Sea mountains — but the very livelihood of the town. Çamburnu’s economy is based on exporting tea and fish to the rest of the country. Spoil those resources, and the village’s 1,7000 residents are out of work.
While the village’s mayor and lawyers filed suits against the dump, locals argued with the dump overseer, blocked bulldozers’ access to it, and tried to bring the situation to the attention of their detached provincial governor. They pointed out that the canvas lining was clearly leaking, that the region’s torrential rains periodically overflowed the dump, and that a wall supposed to hold in the rubbish had fallen down.
Most scenes in the film feature spirited villagers squaring off against government officials or dump workers. In one scene, a spunky older woman confronts an uncomfortable official about the dump, shouting, “I don’t pray for forgiveness from my sins anymore, I just pray that Allah saves us from the garbage!”
Polluting Paradise is more than just an environmental documentary. Several segments of the film draw away from the depressing effects of the dump to snapshot everyday life in the Turkish Black Sea region.
One fascinating sequence shows the process of manufacturing tea, from its harvesting in the field to the Rube-Goldberg-like apparatus that cleans, shreds, dries and packages it. Another scene follows a farmer as he pauses from his work in the fields, runs down to the mosque, and sings the call to prayer through a microphone plugged into the wall.
Less bucolic aspects of life in Çamburnu are also explored. Like most small Turkish towns, the village’s population is dwindling as more young people move to bigger cities for education and work. Akin traces this thread through interviews with several teenage residents of the village. And a hint of the patriarchal system that still dominates rural Turkish culture comes through when the women laughingly explain that they do most of the harvesting work because their men “claim a right to be lazy.”
The film’s biggest weakness is its over-reliance on dramatic scenes and effects — panning shots of the landfill as sinister music swells in the background, shouting matches between villagers and officials — and its patchy explanation of the legal battle against the dump.
It isn’t clear which office in Turkey’s central government authorized the dump in the first place, or who has the power to close it now. The film ends with the mayor’s abrupt declaration that they have lost all the lawsuits they filed. In a country with as many local environmental movements as Turkey, the finer points of Çamburnu’s deserve to be hammered out.
Some scenes, particularly those involving children, also feel a bit staged — as though the kids are parroting lines or retorts about the plant that they have been taught.
A personal connection
Akin’s father’s family is from Çamburnu, but he first came to the region in 2007 while shooting Edge of Heaven.
The story Akin stumbled upon is just one of many environmentally disastrous developments occurring around Turkey, promoted by private corporations and central government but opposed by locals who actually have to live with the consequences.
Despite its flaws, Polluting Paradise is a welcome contribution to Turkey’s sparse history of environmental documentaries. Hopefully it will inspire other filmmakers to return to their hometowns and check in on the welfare of the local environment. It may be more threatened than they think.
Read more about local environmental movements in Turkey:
At the end of September an interactive multi-media exhibit, Eco Future, opened at Manarat Al Saadiyat in Abu Dhabi. The family-oriented exhibit presents children and their families with the opportunity to engage with environmental issues, with an emphasis on urban planning, and to see how the decisions they make today might impact the future.
In 2007, the UAE became the third country in the word, after Switzerland and Japan, to work with WWF on an Ecological Footprint Initiative. The project measures a nation’s environmental impact. And the WWF judged the UAE to be the world’s most environmentally wasteful country on the planet 12 years running, a rank it only recently lost to Qatar and Kuwait earlier in 2012. If all of the world’s inhabitants lived like citizens of the UAE, we would require 5.4 planets in order to sustain the human population. But recent years have seen the beginnings of several promising initiatives to reduce carbon emissions and promote sustainability across the UAE.
Overexposure by pregnant women to cookware coatings like PFC in microwave popcorn bags may result in underweight newborn babies. Be mindful of the risks when you cook.
With all this in mind, the time has come to find out if any new updates have been published regarding safe brands of ceramic cookware that do not release poisonous metals and chemicals to foods during the cooking process. Known by the scientific name of Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), the substance is not only used as a non-stick substance in cookware but also in piping and containers where corrosive chemicals are used. PTFE has a fairly high heat resistance, and has has been found to be fairly reliable for cookware as long as pans containing it are not scratched (resulting in the substance being consumed) and as long excessive cooking heats are not used.
Skiing in Israel or Iran might not be what you think of if you’ve ever skied the Rocky Mountains in Canada or the Alps in Switzerland, but as people look ahead to the winter, Green Prophet can show Middle East readers that skiers can stay close to home. While you be looking around for cheap ski holidays already online, we can propose some that are cheap, support the local economies in the Middle East and which can reduce your carbon footprint (and flights) as you find the need to ski. And as the effects of global warming set in, you might not be able to access most of these sites in the future as the snow retreats permanently. Here are our Top 5 Middle Eastern ski holidays.
A potentially dangerous form of fungus forced a Gulf family from their home. Is your building sick too?
Sounds like a 1950’s horror flick, but it’s been no Hollywood experience for this family-of-five in the United Arab Emirates of Sharjah. They’ve been living in a hotel since September 4 when they returned from vacation to discover the havoc wreaked by mold in their Al Majaz apartment. Incidents like this are increasingly common in hot and humid Gulf states, causing stress, expense, disruption to homelife and litigation. But the real damage is to our health.
Water from natural springs burbles in the ancient Roman stone aqueduct as it carries water downward to this village’s ancient terraces. Palestinian families grow olives, cabbage and eggplant today the same way they did more than 2,000 years ago.
“Each family here gets water one day a week, but the week lasts eight days since there are eight families,” Kayan Manasra, the Palestinian Coordinator of Friends of the Earth Middle East (FOEME), a joint Israeli-Palestinian-Jordanian NGO, told The Media Line. “There are 13 springs and seven are still in use. We farm here the same way we are doing for thousands of years.”
Saudi Arabia’s government has confirmed that it will develop and build a $640 million solar power plant in the holy city of Mecca. It continues the country’s recent talks of bolstering its clean energy sector and with the holy pilgrimage of Hajj beginning, the government believes this is the best time to announce the massive project.
More importantly, however, the announcement of the solar power plant, one of the largest in the Middle East North Africa region, comes as numerous reports, including one from Citibank, have said the country could become a net importer of oil by 2030, making it difficult to meet the energy needs of the population.
Instead of sitting on their hands and waiting, Riyadh is moving forward on clean energy, and the Mecca power plan will have a capacity of 100 megawatts, Saudi economy newspaper Eqtisadiah reported. The office of Mecca’s Mayor Osama bin Fadl al-Bar told Green Prophet that the solar station “will save the city at least $550 million off its electricity bill every year.
Mafroum potatoes melt in your mouth and fill your senses with truly Middle Eastern flavors.
A festive dish, mafroum is one of those foods that reminds me of Moroccan grandmothers who bustle into the kitchen, don an apron, and lovingly conjure delicious food out of vegetables and meat fresh from the shouk. And one of the good things about mafroum is that it satisfies 6 people with only 1 lb. of ground meat. (Tunisians and Libyans also make this dish).
Freshly ground meat, of course, which is how careful Middle Eastern cooks get their meat – ground under their eyes at the butcher’s or the supermarket.
It does take time and a little effort to make mafroum but once it’s done, you need only couscous and a leafy salad to make a complete meal. Note: I often substitute ground turkey for the beef. For a vegetarian version, substitute 1- 1/2 cups cooked quinoa or buckwheat groats.
Have ready 6 bowls or containers, medium sized.
Mafroum, Moroccan Stuffed Potatoes
serves 6
Potatoes:
6 medium potatoes of uniform size, peeled
salt and pepper
flour
2 beaten eggs
Oil for frying
Stuffing:
500 gr. – 1 lb. ground beef
1 cup chopped fresh parsley
1/2 tsp. salt and ground black pepper
* 2/3 tsp. Baharat spice
1/3 tsp. ground turmeric
1/2 Tblsp. sweet paprika
1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
Chili pepper to taste
1/2 tsp. ground ginger
1 potato, grated coarsely, rinsed, and drained till dry
Sauce:
1 large, chopped onion
4 crushed cloves of garlic
4 stalks celery, coarsely chopped
3 Tblsp. tomato paste
1/2 cup chopped tomatoes
1 tsp. salt
One-quarter of a cabbage, cut into coarse chunks
Approx. 1 liter stock or water
3 Tblsp. each of fresh mint, parsley, and celery leaves, chopped
The method for making mafroum
Mix the meat and seasonings for stuffing.
Beat it well to mix thoroughly.
Cover the seasoned meat and refrigerate for half an hour.
In the meantime, get three bowls out. Chop the large onion. Put it in one bowl. In the second bowl put the chopped garlic and celery stalks. Dice the tomato and put it in the third bowl.
Slice each potato almost in half. Leave the bottom uncut so that the two halves stay connected. Stuff the potatoes with the seasoned meat. Pack it in. The open side will show a thicker layer of meat than the inside. With your finger, pat back any meat that spills out of the opening.
Meat wedged between two medium sized potato slices
In a wide pan, heat the oil for frying.
Beat the eggs. Put about 1 cup of flour in the fourth bowl and season it with salt and pepper.
Roll the potatoes in the seasoned flour, shaking them back and forth gently to cover them. Now roll them in the beaten egg.
Fry the potatoes until golden, turning once. Tongs work better than a spatula for this.
Remove from the frying pan and put on paper towels to drain.
Pour out most of the frying oil.
Saute the onion in the remaining oil, till golden. Add the garlic and celery stalks. Fry for 4 minutes.
Add the tomato paste and chopped tomato. Stir, cover, and cook for 10 minutes on low heat.
Season again, lightly. Add the cabbage and stock or water.
Put the potatoes into the sauce, in one layer. Add the chopped mint, parsley and celery leaves. Put the lid on the pan, tilted to cover it partially. Cook over low heat for 2 hours or until the potatoes are tender.
Serve the potatoes over rice or couscous, with the sauce passed around separately if you wish.
* If Baharat spice mix isn’t available, mix these powdered spices to make your own. Blend well and keep in a tightly-lidded jar.
