Now thanks to global obsessions with concrete icons, fracking and poor resource management, even places such as Saudi Arabia are running out of sand.

Sand, it seems, is the epitome of abundance. There are an estimated seven quintillion grains of sand on earth.

That’s 7000000000000000000, count them! But as with oil and water and Helium, the second most abundant element in the universe, we are consuming sand with the false assumption that a very large number is the same as infinity.

Sand may be inexpensive compared to other natural resources but it is extremely useful, even crucial to certain parts of our modern life. Sand is used to make the glass and concrete used in dams and massive skyscraper construction projects in places such as Dubai and Saudi Arabia. It is also being used in 3D printed structures and other futuristic building designs.

The recent obsession with fracking has also caused a rapid rise in the consumption of this limited resource.

In 2009 Green Prophet reported that the massive construction boom caused a shortage of the high quality desert sand used in construction.

So Bahrain and other Persian gulf countries began to restrict the export of sand. Not long after this, sand was being imported to replenish eroded beaches in places such as Cesarea where man-made structures interfere with the normal inflow of sand from the sea.

Peak sand

And while some desert sands are excellent construction materials, these fine-grained sands tend to blow or erode too much to make for good beach sand. So Saudi Arabia has imported beach sand from as far away as Australia.

According to an article published in Der Spielgel, the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) estimates that 40 billion tons of sand are consumed each year, 3/4ths of it in the production of concrete– enough to encircle the earth with a wall 25 meters high.

Fracking requires yet another type of sand. Companies which were previously focused on the relatively small market of sand for golf course have made hundreds of millions of dollars by strip mining places such as the North American pine barrens where enormous flocks of passenger pigeons once lived.

This sand is then used in hydraulic fracturing (fracking), a process where materials are pumped into the ground at high pressure in order to fracture rock and force the stubborn last few drops of oil out of geologic deposits.

Sand is also being used to increase and decrease the amount of territory belonging to certain countries. Singapore has reportedly imported enough sand from Indonesia and Vietnam to increase its area by more than 20% over the past 50 years.

Hong Kong may be doing the same and China is pouring sand into South China Sea in order to create new territory in the disputed Spratly Islands. Poorer countries such as Cape Verde are smuggling their sandy shorelines away to richer countries in a practice that could complicate already difficult political situations in the Middle East.

So the next time you visit a sandy beach or desert, be sure to dump the sand out of your shoes before you go home.

The post Can you believe earth is running out of sand? appeared first on Green Prophet.

Digital animation “Walking Architecture” (clip above) pays homage to a 1960’s design group while pushing the boundaries of their conjectural vision.

UK-based multimedia studio Universal Everything developed a slowly evolving “video sculpture” that changes form, gradually morphing through an array of architectural structures that include geodesic domes, perforated lattices and pixilated building blocks.  Meanwhile, its core motion, the act of walking, remains constant.

Matt Pyke of Universal Everything based the animation, entitled Walking Architecture, on the futuristic imaginings of 1960s architectural group Archigram; they envisioned a city as a living organism whose purposely stride is undeterred by its changing size and form. The title of the video is a reference to Archigram’s “Walking City”.

The original project, conceived by British architect Ron Herron, imagined massive robotic structures, each with its own intelligence, freely walking to wherever their owners wanted or wherever their resources or manufacturing capabilities were needed.

Archigram envisioned an entire series of walking cities, interconnecting when need arose to form enormous walking metropolises, and then dispersing when their concentrated power had served its purpose. Individual buildings could also be mobile.

“The language of materials and patterns seen in radical architecture transform as the nomadic city walks endlessly, adapting to the environments she encounters,” said Pyke. (Note that he recognizes Architecture as female.)

This movie starts with a structure whose massing and proportions are similar to those of a human body.  Over the next seven minutes, it gradually abstracts, transforming into varied shapes that include a cluster of pixilated cubes and a striated mound.

The figure ultimately returns to its original form, poised to begin the transformation anew.

Unlike their contemporary Buckminster Fuller, who worked to build more with less material (recognizing that most matter is finite), Archigram’s fantastical designs assumed a future of limitless resources. Never constructed, their schemes stimulated others to incorporate aspects of their designs into real bricks-and-mortar structures.

Often, hypothetical architecture sparks innovation that catapults significant developments in building materials and technologies. Dream on.

All images from Universal Everything

The post Walking architecture envisions a built environment based on human motion appeared first on Green Prophet.

Rivers are polluted, air quality destroyed, and a way of life for people who survive on those natural resources is often irrevocably destroyed. But what if there was a better way? What if companies try to lessen their environmental impact and regenerate the landscape? What if they voluntarily ensure that communities also benefit from the wealth obtained? Cue the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI).

Launched at the 2002 World Summit for Sustainable Development, EITI is a voluntary coalition made up of governments, companies, civil society groups, investors and international organizations.

It was founded to promote greater revenue transparency in the extractive industries, such as oil, gas and mining. Entirely voluntary, no one organization or country is required to join.

Currently 37 countries are signatories of EITI, 18 of which are deemed compliant. But what does it mean to be EITI compliant?

The EITI has a robust yet flexible methodology, known as the EITI Standard, that ensures that a global standard is maintained throughout the different implementing countries. The EITI Board and the international Secretariat are the guardians of that methodology. Implementation itself, however, is the responsibility of individual countries. The EITI, in a nutshell, is a globally developed standard that promotes revenue transparency at the local level. The EITI Rules establishes the methodology countries need to follow to become fully compliant with the EITI.

Great emphasis has been placed on creating a framework that encourage countries to report how much money they are receiving from companies in the oil, gas and mining sector, and on requiring companies to report their earnings as well – all in an effort to reduce corruption, tax evasion and other social ills that plague so many resource-rich developing countries.

Now the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) is encouraging EITI to take this voluntary initiative one step further.

Leaning on research conducted in the oil and gas rich Caspian Sea region and focusing on Azerbaijan, which is EITI compliant, Kazakhstan, an EITI candidate and Turkmenistan, which has expressed an interest in joining EITI, IIED published a report that encourages even more efforts to ensure that extractive industries work for the environment and local people.

“Countries in the Caspian region have considerable natural wealth in the form of oil and gas deposits that can provide the basis for great improvements in national development, so long as there are strong institutions, greater transparency and accountability, and enforcement mechanisms in place,” says co-author of the report, Professor Ingilab Ahmadov of Azerbaijan’s Khazar University.

IIED has made a handful of recommendations that could help EITI signatories ensure greater governance and accountability. These include prioritizing capacity building in host communities, developing self-evaluation criteria that operates on a competitive ranking system that would motivate member countries to improve their reporting and results, and strengthening their own minimum requirements.

Natural wealth for everyone

“Natural resource wealth should translate into tangible benefits for citizens,” says IIED’s project leader, Dr Emma Wilson. “The EITI is just one of a growing number of initiatives that aim to ensure greater transparency in how governments and companies share the wealth in sectors such as oil, gas and mining.”

“The EITI has had a promising start,” Wilson continues.

”But there is clear potential for it to move beyond transparency and push also for greater accountability and enable civil society to make use of the information it generates to hold governments and companies to account.”

Critics will find all kinds of opportunities for signatories to subvert the system, however the EITI initiative suggests that despite the preponderance of companies that only care about the bottom line, bullies who freely commit ecocide, at least a handful of organizations and countries appear committed to finding a better way.

Image of truck loading clay, Shutterstock

The post Ethical Oil, Gas and Mining? EITI is the LEED of Fossil Fuels appeared first on Green Prophet.

Israel’s electric car company Better Place is going to experience an overhaul, and will manage its existing resources in a new way, according to Evan Thornley, the company’s new CEO who just moved to Israel from Australia. Instead of focusing on selling Renault-made cars and charge plans to keep them juiced, the company is going to seek new agreements with other EV car manufacturers worldwide so that Better Place charge stations and battery replacement points will be the center of a new business model. Over the past month and a half, Better Place’s global CEO Shai Agassi was ousted, and last week its Israeli CEO Moshe Kaplinsky decided to quit amidst speculation that the troubled company had become even more unstable.

A Better Place spokesperson wrote Green Prophet in response to Kaplinsky’s leaving:

“Based on his speech to employees yesterday, he said that since the network was largely in place, he had been thinking about moving on and actually stayed to help Evan during the past 45 days, and that he’ll stay as long as he’s needed.”

In today’s Haaretz, the company confirmed that other top managers from Better Place had left the company. Its new CEO said that the company will focus on building global operations, with global, international managers. Until now the company’s headquarters had been in Israel, and had been managed largely by an Israeli staff. Some pundits expressed doubts on how capable Israelis are at managing global firms.

In Israel some media has been critical of Better Place because the country is still reliant on polluting fuel to run its power plants, which in turn charge the cars that will run through Israel’s cities and byways. They cite the country’s lack of developed railway networks as one reason for the country’s public transportation woes for opportunities in the alternative energy and transport segment.

Indeed Israel’s buses and trains need some more investment so that public transportation is swifter and more accessible to those who need it most. Today it seems frivolous to spend as much money or more on an electric car subscription which in some ways might force drivers to drive more consuming natural resources in order to “use up” a range credit.

Currently Haaretz reports, Better Place is seeking council on how to best create a business model that will fit today’s EV market.

“It appears likely that Better Place will transform from a company that sells electric cars into one that focuses on charging services for electric cars, operating much like a chain of gas stations for the vehicles,” the paper speculates.

Still anything solid is up in the air: “Thornley warned employees in his letter that anything, and anyone, in the company could change, and quickly – and that employees should get used to continuous change.”

Not the kind of news you would like to hear if you are one of the 500 or so new Better Place car owners.

The post Better Place EV Company May Turn Into EV Gas Station appeared first on Green Prophet.

If you’re interested in healing with herbs, this is the book to start from.

Henriette Kress is a well-known Finnish herbalist who maintains Henriette’s Herbal Homepage, the Internet’s largest, and oldest, herbal website. She has published three  books on herbology in Finnish; Practical Herbs is her first in English. It packs an impressive amount of herbal information into a relatively slim volume.

To get a glimpse of using herbs at home here on Green Prophet, read our posts on delicious, medicinal chickweed and the abcs of medicine in ordinary spices.

Starting from basic instructions like identification of herbs and ethical harvesting, Practical Herbs continues with clear, easily understood instructions on all methods of processing herbs and making herbal preparations.  Kress takes the reader through herbal teas (like our brew of wild oats), oils, salves, vinegars, syrups, and tinctures (which are simple extracts of herbs’ properties into alcohol). Throughout the text there are  suggestions as to which preparations are best suited to specific ailments.

Essays on  23 individual herbs follow. Each provides popular and botanical names, habitat, how to cultivate, plant constituents, appearance, effects and uses. Also there are important warnings as to allergies, safety in pregnancy, overdose and more.

There are some surprises even for the herbally knowledgeable. I learned, for example, that fly agaric mushroom – the virulently poisonous, red-capped fungus dotted with white scales that everyone is rightly afraid of – has one excellent medicinal use.  Tinctured into vodka and rubbed onto the spine, it stops the pain of sciatica almost immediately. The author cautions against drinking the tincture, of course, adding wryly, “Internal use can be rather fatal.”

Less spectacular herbs are featured in short passages titled “Quick Help For Small Troubles.” Toothache, for instance, can be remedied by chewing a piece of yarrow root. The author shares personal experience with toothache in her typical down-to-earth way:

“Because you will usually get a toothache on Friday night, when it’s impossible to get an appointment with the dentist, plan on having enough root pieces to make it over a weekend. I’ve found that 20-30 pieces per toothache is a nice amount.”

Although Kress writes about herbs native to her own region, many of them grow in the Middle East as well, or can be cultivated from imported seed. I myself have grown comfrey, California poppy, and echinacea in central Israel’s hot, humid climate. Others, like raspberry, chickweed, mallows and marigold are native to this area and appear in the springtime.

It’s a  well-organized book with plenty of helpful photographs and an index for quick reference. If only for the instructions on making herbal preparations in your own home, it’s worth having. With the author’s lively tone and occasional quirky, humorous comments, it’s also fun to read.

Practical Herbs by Henriette Kress

150 full-color pages with 150 photos.
Hardcopy (softcover, bound): ISBN 978-952-67575-0-6 Price: $32.00
E-book (pdf): ISBN 978-952-67575-1-3. Price: $5.50

Available for sale through the author’s website: Henriette’s Herbal Homepage.

More herby wisdom on Green Prophet:

• Edible Weeds In Your Middle East Garden
• Turmeric, New Hope for Cancer Patients

The post Practical Herbs by Henriette Kress: BOOK REVIEW appeared first on Green Prophet.

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) says that the Mediterranean’s biggest eco-debtor is Italy, meaning that nation uses more resources than it generates.  Does that mean Middle Eastern nations bordering the sea are environmentally savvy consumers? Mama Mia, no! The medium is the message, said Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan. And the message is skewed by the words. Calling our region the “Middle East” chops off connectivity to the other club we belong to: the Mediterranean Basin region.

According to data released by the Global Footprint Network, based on a 47-year-long study, Italy is the Mediterranean Basin country with the highest environmental debt. The Middle East doesn’t appear until fourth and fifth place rankings:  Turkey (10%) and Egypt (9%).

”This study examined country footprints from 1961-2008,” explained WWF Italy’s Scientific Director Gianfranco Bologna in a  report by ANSAMed. ”Italy had the highest ecological deficit in the region. Overall, energy and services demand in the region rose 197% in 47 years, tripling the ecological deficit (+230%). In the last four years, difference between local supply and demand rose by 150%.”

Italy’s ecological deficit is 23%, according to the report. Next are Spain (17%), and France (13%).

The southern shore of the Mediterranean is positioned to climb in the rankings because the richer a country becomes, the greater its demand for resources.  Its carbon footprint will also grow exponentially.

Civil war and political upheaval have dampened economic growth in our region, but as nations emerge stronger and with improved stability, commerce and tourism will resume with ravenous consumption of natural resources.

”Between 1961-2008, Turkey, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya and Syria went from being eco-creditors to debtors, with Algeria making the biggest jump,” Bologna explained. Portugal was the only country that reduced its eco-debt over the study period, by 18% from 1998-2008.

The Middle East dodged a bullet in this “name and shame” analysis, but the data can be viewed as a warning.  Middle Eastern development is inevitable: it’s imperative to plan now for smart growth or face catastrophic ecological deficits.

Image of Mediterranean map by Shutterstock

The post Mediterranean’s Worst Eco-Debtor Not in the Middle East (Yet) appeared first on Green Prophet.

Against the backdrop of the civil war raging in Syria, Syrian Kurds are moving towards self-rule. The Syrian government has relinquished many Kurdish communities to local control. Kurdish flags fly over former government buildings in northeastern Syria. Many new Kurdish language schools are opening up, something the Assad government had previously prohibited.

There are an estimated two million Syrian Kurds living in communities near Syria’s northeastern border with Turkey. (Some sources say three million.) The civil war has excited Kurdish aspirations for statehood, dreams that have been thwarted ever since the Western victors of World War I drew arbitrary borders in the Middle East and divided Kurdish people among four countries: Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran.

Across these borders, Kurdish areas have bountiful natural resources and a common identity, some of the primary essentials for nation-building. Iraqi Kurdistan is rich in natural resources such as oil and gas, and Kurdish areas in southeastern Turkey have untapped oil reserves with an estimated 270 million barrels, located mainly in the Hakkari basin. If united, Kurdistan would also be home to the source of the mighty Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

But theoretically, a united Kurdistan would be landlocked, surrounded by the countries from which it recently gained independence. Iraqi Kurds have already experienced difficulty making independent energy deals with neighbors such as Turkey, without upsetting its relations with surrounding Iraq. Oil and water are both highly contented resources throughout the Middle East. And their distribution, or lack there of, has often been a contributing factor behind uprisings, ethnic tensions and societal unrest. The natural wealth of Kurdish territories has proven both a help and hindrance to achieving autonomy.

::New York Times

Image of Kurdish woman in Istanbul via Shutterstock

Read more about Kurdish people in the Middle East:
Iraqi Sheikh Threatens To Demonstrate If Kurds Don’t Share Water
Turkey Starts Buying Kurdish Gas Over Baghdad’s Objections
Get Into Green Music and Art in Iraq Before Earth Day

The post Kurdish Self-Rule Spreading in War-Torn Syria appeared first on Green Prophet.

Both an onshore and offshore leak, it is particularly hazardous as large quantities of hydrogen sulfide gas are being released.

Director Hassan Abdel Salan said that the company is drilling an additional three wells to stem the leak, which appears to have been continuing over a period of several months, but blames Ministry of Environment researchers sent to evaluate the scene for failing to conduct thorough geophysical surveys.

Green Prophet has been unable to verify these reports but the local newspaper claims that General Petroleum has been fined $300,000 for their role in the spill. Even though Egypt is caught up in major political upheavals given the ongoing presidential race, if there is to be any hope of recovery, somebody ought to start paying serious attention to the country’s vulnerable natural resources.

Image credit: Contaminated Fish, Shutterstock

The post 7th Red Sea Oil Spill Since September Goes Virtually Unnoticed appeared first on Green Prophet.

Each cabinet represents a chapter in Pamuk’s book of the same name in which the main character, Kemal Basmaci, the son of a wealthy industrialist, collects artifacts that remind him of his cousin – a poor sales woman (who is also his cousin) with whom he is completely smitten. 

Today’s consumerism has grown to feverish heights compared to that of Istanbul during the 1970s’s, the time period in which The Museum of Innocence is set.

But for the book’s protagonist, things take on a different significance. After a series of events cuts short a passionate love affair with his lower-classed relative Fusun, Basmaci begins to collect items that remind him of the time he shared with her. For years he collects these items with the intention of eventually placing them in a museum, a pastime that becomes increasingly obsessive and unhealthy.

The objects include shoes, an old sink, ID cards and even a toothbrush.

In an interview with Qantara, Pamuk said:

I love the profane magic such things possess and that one discovers this only at the second glance. Just think how it is to find an old cinema ticket, by chance, in a jacket pocket, years after you saw the film. Suddenly everything comes back to you – not only the film but the smell of the cinema and the atmosphere of the evening. Such things bring back memories, tell us entire stories.

Perhaps accidentally, The Museum of Innocence draws attention to how drastically the relevance of having things has changed in four decades; today, our incessant desire to own certain objects such as smart phones, tablets (some even gold-plated) and even the latest round of eco-gadgets threatens our very existence as natural resources are becoming dangerously scarce and landfills and oceans are overflowing with waste.

Instead of holding magic, many of the objects we now possess are emblems of our self-destruction much in the same way that with every new possession, Basmaci drove himself deeper into his misaligned obsession with Fusun. An underlying theme seems to be that an over-attachment to material objects of any kind or for any reason gives rise to problematic consequences.

In any case, we love the novelty of Pamuk’s Istanbul museum, which was realized over a decade and contains numerous hidden treasures, as a powerful reflection on the nature of stuff – Turkish stuff – and what it reveals of Turkey’s socio-politico evolution over the last four decades.

image via Dorian Jones 

Relevant Stories on Stuff and How it Hurts the Planet:
Mazzy Reviews the Story of Stuff
Where Stuff Comes From and Where it Goes
3 Minute Video Shows How Humans Devoured Earth in 250 Years

The post Nobel Winner Orhan Pamuk Devotes a Museum to Ordinary Things appeared first on Green Prophet.

Last week two environmental representatives were added to Israel’s Petroleum Council, according to the Jerusalem Post. The council has been restructured to include a total of 13 members, including seven members of the public. As Israel’s ongoing court dispute between government officials and national gas distributors proves, the industry has a local history of disregarding public interest for financial gain – look to our past story on polluting gas stations. Israel’s Environmental Protection Minister Gilad Erdan praised the recent decision, saying: “Finally environmental considerations will be incorporated into the distribution of drilling licenses and tenders for the exploration and production of petroleum.”

When massive deposits of natural gas, 6.5 times the size of Tel Aviv, were discovered in Israel’s territorial waters it changed Israel’s future.

The tiny nation must unravel the challenge of mining newfound natural resources without causing environmental degradation that would negatively impact its populace. We think adding environmental and public representatives are a small step in the right direction.

:: Jerusalem Post

Image via Wikimedia Commons

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