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CSR in the Middle East

Karen Chernick
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CSR in the Middle East

Help Sustainability Advisory Group hear the real deal about corporate responsibility and sustainability in the Middle East. [image via: Ben]

Environmental organizations are, of course, very important.  But often big change comes from the big companies who have big power.  Which is why it’s important not only to support green non-profits, but companies that are making environmentally-friendly strides as well.  In preparation for the 7th Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Summit taking place in Dubai from May 30th – June 3rd 2010, Sustainability Advisory Group is conducting its second annual survey on executive views on corporate responsibility and sustainability in the Middle East.

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Meat Prices Going Up? Tips for Switching to a Vegetable-Based Diet

Hannah Katsman
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Meat Prices Going Up? Tips for Switching to a Vegetable-Based Diet

vegetarian-diet-tipsCombat High Meat Prices with Tips for Going Vegetarian

Argentina has halted export of a main dietary staple, beef, to keep local prices down. This has led to a beef shortage worldwide, along with an increase in price.   How will that affect us here in the Middle East? And what can we do about it?

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C.E.S. Thinks Inside the Box to Save Energy

Karin Kloosterman
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2
C.E.S. Thinks Inside the Box to Save Energy

Israel’s C.E.S. box greens your home power use, telling you where faulty appliances are sucking juice from the grid.

Like GreenRoads to save fuel (invested in by Virgin’s Branson, and Gore’s clean tech fund), investors know the money is not just on innovative futuristic technologies, but companies that work today to save fuel, and money.

Consider this: your electric bill has gone sky high. You suspect the air conditioner, which has been emitting a rattling noise since you fired it up in the spring. Only that’s not the culprit – how are you to know that it’s your fridge that’s not working properly and using so much power that running it constitutes 40 percent of your energy bill? Now imagine having a device that can tell you where and how your home electricity is being consumed, and that can program parts of the house – like your teenager’s room or the den – to shut down in order to save money, energy and wear and tear on your appliances when no one’s home.

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United Nations Call for a Nuclear Free Middle East to Stop Iran

Maurice Picow
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United Nations Call for a Nuclear Free Middle East to Stop Iran

nuclear reactor middle east illustrationThe UN’s Security Council pushes for a nuclear-free Middle East, a good idea for people and the environment. Image via davidsommerfeld.

What Happens to the Environment in a Nuclear Middle East as well as on the dangers of building nuclear reactors in countries like Jordan and Egypt are articles we’ve delved into in the past. Even one was written dealing with the ramifications of  a possible vaccine against the effects of nuclear radiation.

But now, a lot of hype is being given in regards to trying the make the Middle East a nuclear free zone, as reported in the Jerusalem Post last week. And these new proposals, backed by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council: China, Great Britain, France, Russia, and the USA, appear to be expressing concern over the ongoing nuclear program of Iran. We think the results of such a ban could be good for the over all health of the Middle East. 

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Multimatrix Invests Millions In Israel's Small Wind Market

Maurice Picow
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Multimatrix Invests Millions In Israel's Small Wind Market

wind turbines israel golan heightsMultimatrix and AES invest in Israel water company to catch the wind.

Harnessing wind energy has never been a priority endeavor in Israel, compared to projects dealing with solar energy. In fact, the only large size wind energy project there has been the Mei Golan wind farm, composed of ten large wind turbines on a hill near the cease-fire border with Syria on the Golan Heights.

The Golan, a windy plateau that was captured from Syria by Israel in the June 1967 Six Day War, is one of the few places in Israel that has enough constant wind velocity to warrant the use of wind power over other forms of renewable energy. past Green Prophet article in which new Golan Heights solar energy projects appeared to be upstaging the Mei Golan wind farm which uses already outdated technology to run a the wind turbines on Tel Asiniya, which generate about 6 megawatts of electricity.

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Join The Wide World of WED on June 5th

Tafline Laylin
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Join The Wide World of WED on June 5th

gorilla-WED2010For This Year’s World Environment Day, the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) Asks the World’s Citizens to Mobilize for Climate Action. [image via flickr]

In the first few months of each year, we report on several special days and hours:  there’s World Water Day on March 22nd, Earth Hour on the last Saturday of March, and Earth Day on April 22nd.  The next earth-themed day – World Environment Day (WED) – will be celebrated on June 5th.  We  think of these as living memorials to our planet.  Just as we set aside time to honor saints and leaders, environment days similarly create punctuations in our routines.  However, rather than meditate on the sacrifice and wisdom of our leaders, we reflect instead on our collective responsibility to protect everybody’s earth.

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Drip Irrigation Gives Hope to Drought Plagued Farmers in Syria

Green Prophet
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1
Drip Irrigation Gives Hope to Drought Plagued Farmers in Syria

colorful damascus farm vegetables syria photoMicrofinance loans help Syrian farmers meet their water needs to grow crops like this tasty spread at a market in Damascus.

While severe drought in eastern and northeastern Syria is seriously affecting lives and livelihoods, farmers may draw some hope and comfort from an irrigation success story in the central district of Salamieh. An experimental drip irrigation project run by the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme (RSP) in the village of Fraytan (17 farmers) in 2003, has spread to 52 villages today.

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Rebranding Yemen With $1 Billion Tourism Campaign. Will It Be Eco?

adam gonn - the media line
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Rebranding Yemen With $1 Billion Tourism Campaign. Will It Be Eco?

yemen men traditional smokingDiversifying away from oil Yemen plans to build six beach resorts over the next five years to draw tourists. How much will be sustainable?

The Yemen Tourism and Promotion Board announced the plan on Thursday to boost the country’s tourism industry. Each of the planned six facilities along the Yemeni coast is valued at $150 – $250 million. In addition, 44 small-to-medium-sized projects across the country’s mountainous interior will be built, ranging from three-star hotels to mud and stone huts.“I’m inviting potential investors to invest in the Yemen tourism sector as we have six major projects in the pipeline approved by the government,” said Omar Babelgheith, Yemen’s deputy minister of tourism development.

The projects “will change the image of Yemen tourism,” he said. The total amount of all the projects is estimated at $1bn said Babelgheith, “which will contribute to support Yemen as one of the main destinations of the world.”

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Baptizing In Jordan's Holy Sewage, The Tour and the Report

Karin Kloosterman
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Baptizing In Jordan's Holy Sewage, The Tour and the Report

kaser el yehud jesus baptism siteThe Jordan River’s source is a sewage pipe, and it ends in a whimper. Predicted to run dry by 2011, Karin goes on a media tour with FoEME to see firsthand the damage done. Here a Russian tourist dips into Kaser El Yehud, believed to be Jesus’ baptismal site on the Jordan.

The bus full of foreign journalists (including Green Prophet’s Maurice) wobbles down a barely graded side-road flanked by an untamed overgrowth of weeds and reeds. “I am going to show you something they don’t want you to see,” says Gidon Bromberg, water activist and director of the Israeli chapter of Friends of the Earth Middle East.

Bromberg has made it his life mission to protect Israel’s precious and limited water supply, the same waters shared by his neighbors and partners in Jordan, and the Palestinian Authority. There is a water crisis in the region; some like Bromberg cite mismanagement as one of the major reasons. Noses are held on approach as the bus reaches the site that some in Israel’s government would rather hide — not for religious or political reasons, but environmental ones.

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Geotectura's Visual Feast, Out of the Box

Tafline Laylin
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0
Geotectura's Visual Feast, Out of the Box

geotectura-univercell“The Sufi Order International (SOI) community desired to build an interspiritual temple called the ‘Universel’ at the Abode of the Message located in the Berkshire Mountains near New Lebanon, New York,” taken from Geotectura’s online literature.

Although we previously covered their  Greenest Building in Israel, which is currently in the process of acquiring LEED certification, as a special to Green Prophet readers, we would like to present a phantasmagorical selection of Israel-based Geotectura’s architectural designs.

For these various designs,  Dr. Yossi Cory and his team have received approximately twenty design awards, the most recent of which is the 3rd prize in Israel’s Project of the Year Award this year, as well as numerous media mentions. They are driven by a philosophy of social responsibility and energy efficiency, like the Swiss 2000 Watt Society, and unimpeded thinking.  On one wall of their Tel Aviv office, they have a giant painting of Salvador Dali, the eccentric painter of Melting Clocks and other time-bending art.  Geotectura designs might not shift time, but they certainly shift imaginations.

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Egyptian Native Antoine Bittar Shares Solar Expertise in 'Sun City'

Ira Moskowitz
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Egyptian Native Antoine Bittar Shares Solar Expertise in 'Sun City'

Antoine Bittar at MENASOL 2010Dr. Antoine Bittar, one of the solar experts who spoke at MENASOL. (Photo by author.)

While the previous MENASOL speaker profiled here (Nasser Majali) is a relative newcomer to the field of solar energy, Dr. Antoine Bittar, the Engineering Director for Solar Power at RES Mediterranean, is a leading expert in this field.

For the soft-spoken scientist, the conference in Cairo was a homecoming of sorts: Though now based in France, he was born in the neighborhood where the conference took place. Fittingly, he notes, the neighborhood is called Heliopolis – “sun city.”

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Tigo and AGA Deal Means Solar Energy for Residents of High-rises

Russel Cohen
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Tigo and AGA Deal Means Solar Energy for Residents of High-rises

tigo energy solar energy photoTigo offers a tech and IT solution to squeeze more energy from the sun, which may be going vertical in high-rises through US partner.

Solar energy has traditionally been a land or “area-intensive” form of alternative energy. Solar energy generation required massive, land-hungry solar power farms in order to compete with conventional equivalents, or large areas of roof space to accommodate photovoltaic panels that were not known for their efficiency at converting sunlight.

This requirement for extensive areas of roof space left the inhabitants of high-rise apartment building out in the cold, so to speak.

A joint venture between Israeli start-up Tigo Energy Ltd and US-based Architectural Glass & Aluminum Company Inc. (AGA) will eventually offer apartment dwellers the opportunity to reduce their green footprint by making solar energy technology more widely available for this difficult environment.

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EDAMA Works to Forge Partnerships for Green Projects in Jordan

Ira Moskowitz
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EDAMA Works to Forge Partnerships for Green Projects in Jordan

Nasser MajaliThe CEO of Jordan’s EDAMA organization, Nasser Majali. (Photo by author)

Nasser Majali, the CEO of Amman-based EDAMA – an NGO working to promote energy, water and environment projects in Jordan – was not listed as one of the scheduled speakers at the MENASOL solar energy conference in Cairo this week. However, given just a few minutes of advance notice, he gave a smooth presentation about his organization’s mission.

Majali is a serial entrepreneur with no particular expertise in the fields of energy, water or  the environment. Instead, his green passion developed during nature outings as an amateur photographer: He became alarmed by the piles of litter and other environmental damage he witnessed.

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The Best of Buckminster Fuller 2010 Finalists

Tafline Laylin
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The Best of Buckminster Fuller 2010 Finalists

Image credit: © 2009 Farshid Assassi, Courtesy of BNIM Architects.

The International Living Building Institute Offers an Earthier, more Holistic Building Standard.  The Omega Center for Sustainable Living (above) and the SF EcoCenter (below) are Potential Candidates for Certification.

Twenty-three years ago, when then Chair of the United Nation’s World Commission on Environment and Development first rejuvenated the term “sustainable development” in the Brundtland Report, surely she didn’t envision Dubai’s towering Burj Khalifa? By definition, buildings that are sustainable conserve an ecological balance by avoiding depletion of natural resources.  Big Burj is looking decidedly unsustainable.

Something like Jerusalem’s living building, however, comes closer.  Much closer, and demonstrates that despite the mainstream consumer mentality, people worldwide are deeply concerned about environmental degradation.  News of inventive, ecologically based solutions flood the cyber waves.  And each year, the Buckminster Fuller Challenge awards $100,000 to the best of them.

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Tel Aviv’s Annual Architectural Weekend Celebrates Urban Green Spaces

Karen Chernick
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Tel Aviv’s Annual Architectural Weekend Celebrates Urban Green Spaces

Tel Aviv highlights green buildings, spaces, construction techniques, and gardens during its annual “Houses from Within” weekend. [image via: Ykravitz]

One spring weekend every year, for the past few years, Tel Aviv celebrates its architecture and invites the public to learn about the special structures that get to call the city their home.  These structures usually include architecturally significant public buildings, but also encompass architectural spaces that are generally closed to the public such as urban villas, interior designers’ lofts and open studios that open their doors and welcome the curious masses to view Houses from Within.  For the past couple of years the event has made a greater effort to highlight environmentally friendly and/or sustainable urban spaces, and this year there are more green events than ever before.

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