Keen on doing business in the Gulf region? This might be your conference. The Gulf Environment Forum – the first comprehensive environmental conference and exhibition to take place in the Persian Gulf region – has been planned and is going to take place in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia on March 7-9, 2010. The forum is being […]
A ban on alcohol sanitizer products and a looming swine flu, may keep pilgrims away from Hajj. As the annual Hajj or pilgrimage to the Muslim holy sites of Mecca and Medina draw near, the question once again is whether the Saudi government can adequately deal with more than 3 + million pilgrims that are […]
Non-profit groups from 18 developing countries called on Saudi Arabia to “stop playing an obstructionist role” in the current climate change negotiations in Barcelona, claiming the oil kingdom’s delaying tactics will hurt the world’s poor. “Developing countries need all the support they can get,” said Wael Hmaidan of IndyACT Lebanon and founder of the Arab […]
Climate change activists are pooling their resources as we speak in Barcelona at the Barcelona Climate Change Talks. This is an antecedent to the big United Nations climate change conference in Copenhagen in December where countries are expected to draft real solutions to stopping the over-production of greenhouse gases. Part-time Green Prophet Stacy Feldman reports […]
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia may still be considered as one of the most conservative from a religious standpoint. But with the opening of the new King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, otherwise known as KAUST, a new era in academic learning, combined with new innovations in ecological architecture and design, has begun in which […]
Plant pathologist Norman Borlaug, 95, died this Saturday, raising questions about the legacy of industrial food in the Third World. In 1970, Borlaug received a Nobel Peace Prize for averting famine through bringing fertilizers, pesticides and new plant strains to countries like India, Mexico and Pakistan. But environmentalists argue that his plant engineering only delayed […]
Saudi Arabian police forces already protect their citizens. Starting next year, they will also protect the environment. Last week the Saudi Arabian Presidency of Meteorology and Environment (PME) announced that police precints across the country would be receiving green policy guardians who would perform inspections and ensure compliance with environmental standards. According to PME President, […]
There is a lot of debate around the use of ethanol and other plant-based fuels. Many claim that the energy required to produce ethanol (including fertilizers, farm equipment, transformation from plant materials, and transportation) just doesn’t sufficiently counteract all the environmental damage caused by the fossil fuels that is replaces. So as if the discussion […]
Saudi Arabia has always had an acute fresh water shortage problem. The problem has been so severe that a proposal was once considered to literally tow an ice burg from Antarctica all to way to the Kingdom for use as fresh water. The practicality of constructing desalination plants to extract salt and other minerals from […]
Millions of Muslims go on the annual Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina every year. A new high speed train planned by Saudi Arabia is bound to make the journey smoother, cooler, and much more environmentally-friendly. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has long been thought of as a country where white gowned sheikhs drive luxury […]
This week, executives of major oil companies met at the Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) annual conference in Houston, Texas and (finally!) expressed a willingness to help combat global climate change. This is a major step, because these companies denied the existence of global warming and deliberately tried to obstruct political progress on the issue […]
As African nations sell and lease its land, and birthright, to the world’s super-powers, and arguably “dangerous” countries like Saudi Arabia who support Islamic fundamentalism, we are seeing a brand new kind of neo-colonial land-grab, and it scares me. I’d reported on Galten’s Jatropha seeds for biofuel here, and also on the Israeli conglomerate Ormat, […]
This past Friday we saw the conclusion of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Poznan, Poland. This two-week long conference brought together representatives from 189 countries for talks to lay the groundwork for Copenhagen in 2009, where the convention signatories have agreed to finalize a global treaty for the post-2012 period (2012 is when […]
Today’s guest post is by Nissim Dahan, who is working to sell his “Vision of Hope.” Dagan envisions a network of individuals and organizations to help create economic prosperity in the Middle East. Through funding and implementing new environmental solutions, like clean technologies, Dahan believes the world can fight extremism. He uses the analogy of the […]
You’d think that the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in the Persian Gulf would have nothing to do with alternative energy initiatives, right? Since they have close to a quarter of the global petroleum reserves literally underfoot, you might assume that they’d try to prevent the development of alternatives, or at least not be […]