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Meet Rawabi’s dreamer: Bashar Masri

Arwa Aburawa
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rawabi palestineWe speak to Bashar Masri, the man behind Rawabi, which means “The Hills”, Palestine’s first planned and green city.

Since announcing plans to build Palestine’s first planned and green city back in 2008, the Rawabi project has faced its fair share of criticism. From political complications over using Jewish National Fund trees, concerns by environmentalists over the lack of water and waste-water management plans to threats by Israel to shut down access roads and boycotts– the project really has seen it all.

Rawabi (which means hills in Arabic) is an ambitious $800 million USD project which aims to build houses for up to 25,000 people in a location between Jerusalem and Nablus whilst respecting the environment. Despite these good intentions the Rawabi project does seems to pose more questions then it answer.

For example, how does it plan to navigate the political conflict between Israel and Palestine during construction? Does the Rawabi project really live up to its green credentials? And what do Palestinians think of the project? In a bid to get to the bottom of these questions we caught up with Bashar Masri, the man behind the Rawabi project to find out more.

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Bin Laden is Dead – Will the Environment Benefit?

Green Prophet
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11
Bin Laden is Dead – Will the Environment Benefit?

bin laden environment carbon emissionsKilled in a hide-out in Pakistan, Osama bin Laden’s body will be transferred to America.

United States President Barack Obama has confirmed that al Qaida leader Osama bin Laden is dead. Bin Laden was killed in a hide-out in Pakistan, north of Islamabad, according to the White House. The Jihadi terrorist was the mastermind of the Trade Tower bombings on September, 11, 2001.

“We conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden,” the president said in a televised address to the United States public.

Other Al Qaida actions against America included bombings of two American embassies in Africa. Obama is vigilant about stamping out terror, a welcome move that would no doubt have environmental and health benefits for the entire Middle East region.

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BrightSource Energy Has Potential to Supply 13% of California’s Electricity

Susan Kraemer
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BrightSource Energy Has Potential to Supply 13% of California’s Electricity


According to its recent filing with the SEC, BrightSource Energy has control of approximately 110,000 acres suitable for solar development in California and the U.S. Southwest with the potential to produce approximately 11 GW (11,000 MW) of installed capacity.

The total capacity supplied to California – from all forms of electricity – both from in-state and from out of state is currently 80 GW. This would mean that – if there were none of the nonsense legal obstacles that seem to beset all solar development – BrightSource Energy alone would be able to produce nearly 13% of California’s total electricity needs, just from solar, well up from the less than the 1% of total solar from all developers on the grid so far.

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Former Masdar Director Says The UAE Must End Subsidies

Tafline Laylin
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Former Masdar Director Says The UAE Must End Subsidies

green building, zero carbon, zero waste, grenea, khaled awad, masdarFounding director of Property Development at the Masdar Initiative, Khaled Awad claims that fuel and water subsidies preclude meaningful sustainable development.

Green building won’t be viable until the United Arab Emirates end water and fuel subsidies, according to Khaled Awad. The founding director of Property Development at the Masdar Initiative and co-founder of Grenea, a Dubai-based startup that aims to develop zero-carbon zero-waste real estate communities around the world, Mr. Awad has offices near Jumeirah Beach in Dubai.

Overlooking the Burj Al Arab, a mesmerizing tower that resembles a sail, the quiet interior belies the bustle outside. What used to be a peaceful weekend getaway for Emiratis is now a metropolitan center full of only partially-occupied towers that devour water and energy. But this wasteful development model is at odds with a dismal reality. The oil boom is over, water is not plentiful, and climate change is real.

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A “Fresh” Arab Spring Flows Through Auja, Palestine

Karin Kloosterman
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A “Fresh” Arab Spring Flows Through Auja, Palestine

auja palestine authority palestinian water jericho peaceA visit to Auja, Palestine can open the world’s eyes to sustainable peace through water.

It starts with water and ends with a Debka dance: Friends of the Earth Middle East, a trilateral Israel-Palestine-Jordan non-profit organization has launched an unbelievably hopeful project based on water in the West Bank village of Auja, about 10 minutes from the city of Jericho in the Jordan Valley.

Probably not since the Roman times when an aqueduct ran through the village, has something this exciting came to Auja (said oo-jah), a rundown and dusty Palestinian village of about 5,000 people of local Arab tribes and Bedouin stock. Today, the locals are getting ready for the guest of honor: American Consul General to Palestine, Daniel Rubinstein, is set to arrive in the next hour. He’s an American Jew, who speaks fluent Arabic.

“Oh good, the lions have arrived,” says Gidon Bromberg excitedly, as we wheel into the dusty parking lot in his rental car, staff scurrying around us, including the local mayor, putting the finishing touches on the new building that houses the Auja EcoCenter. Everything is spic and span, polished, swept and dusted. A tent is ready to host Rubinstein and his entourage.

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Anne Frank’s Tree Memorialized in Israel

Green Prophet
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Anne Frank’s Tree Memorialized in Israel

anne frank tree
This tree gave Anne Frank so much pleasure when she was in hiding.

Just before it was about to die, seeds from the Anne Frank tree in Amsterdam were collected and germinated so that the tree that she loved so much could live on. In her diary, now a book, The Diary of Anne Frank, Frank recounts her time in hiding from the Nazis. And although she didn’t survive the Death Camps, her father released her diary to the world. In it she mentions the white horse chestnut tree, in the garden of her secret annex hideout. This tree that gave her so much joy will be part of a new memorial in Israel.

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Interview with MiKlum Studio, Designers of Furniture Out of Nothing

Karen Chernick
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Interview with MiKlum Studio, Designers of Furniture Out of Nothing

"upcycled wood shelf design"Singular upcycled wooden boxes called “Frank” combine to create larger design pieces.

Tel Aviv has been fortunate enough to experience a recent influx of sustainable design studios, creating anything from rotary telephone desk lamps to wood veneer light fixtures.  These studios are slowly bringing upcycled and sustainable design to the mainstream, and two new girls on the block recently opened yet another studio – MiKlum.  MiKlum (or, “from nothing” in Hebrew) is the south Tel Aviv studio of Daphna Olinsky and Einat Zinger-Feiler, two ladies who decided to create, in their own words, “renewvative design”.

The two “gather and re-design materials that have completed their ‘conventional’ life cycle and are considered waste,” using their design prowess to transform these materials into new, functional, interesting pieces.  Green Prophet spoke to Daphna and Einat recently, learning more about sustainable design, the eco-design community in Tel Aviv, and how they go about collecting materials.

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Strip Naked for the Dead Sea and Spencer Tunick

Karin Kloosterman
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Strip Naked for the Dead Sea and Spencer Tunick

dead sea nakedThe Naked Sea installation is intended to draw attention to the declining environmental situation at the Dead Sea. Will you get naked for the Dead Sea?

Naked-people-installation-artist Spencer Tunick is still trying to raise funds to create a massive naked art exhibit which he plans on photographing at the Dead Sea – which we covered last year.

Called “Naked Sea,” he plans on using real life floating bodies to float on the Dead Sea while he documents the event in print. Spencer and his Israeli partner Ari Fruchter are now trying to raise $60,000 by June 6 to make it happen by the end of this year.

Even winter at the Dead Sea can be warm and divine. But does Spencer have any idea what the high salt content of the Dead Sea can do to your private parts, when exposed?

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Obvious Rainwater-Harvester Idea Wins Phillips Livable Cities Award

Susan Kraemer
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Obvious Rainwater-Harvester Idea Wins Phillips Livable Cities Award


Yemen has the dubious distinction of being the first country that is expected to entirely run out of water, as the globe heats up. Its capital city Sana’a could be the first city to be emptied of its nearly half a million inhabitants by the catastrophic water scarcity that threatens billions by the the 2030s, with climate change. Except, for Sana’a, the end of water is expected in as soon as in six years, in 2017. So perhaps it is no surprise that it is a Yemeni who has had the winning idea for an international contest for “innovative ideas to improve the health and well-being in cities” Livable Cities Award, from Phillips, the US lighting company.

If there is one thing that makes a city unlivable it is no water.

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Exclusive: Masdar City Open House Photos

Tafline Laylin
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1
Exclusive: Masdar City Open House Photos

masdar city, green building, zero carbon, abu dhabi, desertThe first Masdar city Market Street Fair and Organic Market was a huge hit among expats and Emiratis! Green Prophet was there. See exclusive pictures below.

Hundreds of expatriates and Emiratis attended Masdar City’s first Market Street Fair and Organic Market this past Friday. A friendly family affair complete with cotton candy, clowns, and princess fairies, the event gave locals and visitors alike their first glimpse of some of the world’s most sustainable architectural and cleantech developments. It also gave local businesses such as the Little Fair Trade Shop, Ekotribe, and Bokashi the chance to show off their eco-friendly wares, while organizations such as the Land Art Generator Initiative and the Middle East Vegetarian Group likewise strutted their good green stuff.

Although remarkably well-attended, all was not smooth. Only one set of bathrooms was available for the throng, the pod car journey was exciting but unsightly, Mazaraa Organic farm nearly cooked their ducks and goats alive in the roaring sun, and visitors had to line up for a solid 20-30 minutes in order to ride the pod cars back to the entrance. Since the small center of the future Masdar City has never before experienced such a large influx of curious bodies, these hiccups are to be expected, and organizers have until September to fix them. But it was otherwise an enormous success.

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Why China Could Prove to be the Better Place for EVs

Susan Kraemer
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Why China Could Prove to be the Better Place for EVs

better place chinaCould China’s totalitarian government advance disruptive technology better?

This week Shai Agassi’s Better Place is realizing a long held dream of moving to a better place to realize electric vehicle battery swapping in lieu of fast charging for the electric car: Guangzhou, China. While Agassi’s electric vehicle battery swapping stations have already launched in far smaller nations: Agassi’s native Israel, and Denmark and Hawaii, it could well be that this launch in China will turn out to be the one that really gives lift-off to the Better Place battery swapping model for the electric car industry.

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Sabotaged Egyptian Gas Pipeline to Israel Shifts Energy Attention Offshore

Maurice Picow
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Sabotaged Egyptian Gas Pipeline to Israel Shifts Energy Attention Offshore

egypt israel gas pipelineSabotaged Gas Pipeline: Relying on Egypt in future is doubtful

Israel’s interest in natural gas as an energy source has been written about several times on Green Prophet, beginning with the Yam Tethy gas exploration projects in the Eastern Mediterranean. With the second sabotage of the natural gas pipeline between Egypt, Israel and Jordan, a few days ago, from which Israel has been receiving 40% of its natural gas supplies, more attention is now being shifted to the offshore drilling projects being carried out by companies such as Noble Energy and Tshuva’s Delek Group.

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Turkish Environmentalists, Architects Critical of Proposed Canal

Julia Harte
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Turkish Environmentalists, Architects Critical of Proposed Canal

turkey canal turkishTurkey’s prime minister has announced a plan to build a second waterway through Istanbul, just west of the existing Bosphorus Strait.

As Turkey’s June parliamentary elections draw nearer, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has unveiled what he calls “the biggest project of the century”: a canal from the Black Sea to the Marmara Sea. The seas are already connected by the Bosphorus Strait, which divides the city of Istanbul between two peninsulas and marks the border between European Turkey and Anatolian Turkey. Currently, some 150 ships pass through the Bosphorus each day, with dozens more queued up and waiting on either end. In Erdoğan’s vision, most of this traffic would be diverted to the canal, and the Bosphorus would be reserved for aquatic sports and city transportation, “like in the old days.” Erdoğan did not give an estimate of the cost, but analysts put it at $40 billion. The project is supposed to begin in 2014.

A triumph of city planning? Not quite, according to several prominent environmentalists and architects.

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OPEC Countries Seek “Developing Nation” Funds to Capture CO2

Susan Kraemer
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OPEC Countries Seek “Developing Nation” Funds to Capture CO2


Oil giants are looking into CCS to cut greenhouse gases. good for them! But who should pay for it?

Well, now we know why Saudi Arabia held out for Carbon Capture & Storage to be eligible for CDM funding at Cancun. Sequestering CO2 in the ground is being looked at by three Middle Eastern countries, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE that lead the world in production of greenhouse gases from oil production.

According to a study conducted by Australia’s  Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) Institute, there are currently 243 CCS projects in development worldwide, of which only 85 are large scale. Carbon Capture and Storage is a promising technology that could reduce the damage done to the climate by the mining and use of fossil fuels. But it is a very new and untested technology. As yet, only eight large-scale CCS projects are actually in operation.

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PETA Offers To Support Green Synagogue- But Only If They Promote Going Vegan!

Arwa Aburawa
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PETA Offers To Support Green Synagogue- But Only If They Promote Going Vegan!

PETA, the animal rights organisation, has offered to make a donation to the world’s first green synagogue which is currently under financial strain but on one condition…

The ground-breaking green synagogue in California that has been appealing for financial support to help keep it open has had a surprising- if unexpected- offer from PETA. The campaigning animals rights organisation known for its media-savvy and sometimes outright bizarre tactics has offered to make a donation to the synagogue on the condition that they agree to display PETA’s ‘Meat’s Not Green’ poster advocating a vegan diet in its synagogue.

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