Built on the profits of oil, should Masdar hold the mantle of energy leadership for the world? Yosef asks. According to the Masdar City website, the undertaking is intended to be Abu Dhabi’s “multi-faceted response to the challenges facing a sustainable future.” The city, intended to house 50,000 residents in a kind of technosphere designed […]
Microfinance 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 […]
Islamic wall art and greeting cards, with religious intonations in line with green values in Islam. Sakina Design‘s logo is green not only because the company creates Islamic design and green is an important color for Islam. Their logo is green because they are an environmentally conscious business… for partially religious reasons. The husband and […]
Though lacking the resources that have enabled richer Arab states, and the UAE in particular, to play a leading role in promoting renewable energy, Syria is also looking to boost its involvement in this field. This week, the Higher Institute for Applied Sciences and Technology (HIAST) in Damascus is hosting an International Conference on International […]
Israeli-built wind farm on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Israeli Syrian expert skeptical that nature Peace Park on Golan Heights would bring peace. We’d reported last month on the Peace Parks conference hosted by Tel Aviv University. The idea is to create a nature reserve out of the occupied Golan Heights now under Israel sovereignty, and […]
Following a conference on a proposed nature peace park between Syria and Israel in the Golan Heights, Saleem H. Ali, a guest speaker at the conference gives his opinion on the prospects and potential of a peace park. Ali is associate professor of environmental planning at the University of Vermont and the author of Treasures […]
Syria faces a severe drought. A shift in weather patterns, or just a dry season? A severe water shortage in Syria is forcing farmers to look for alternative means of livelihood but the drought’s impact doesn’t end with the crops. Around a quarter of a million Syrian farmers have been forced to abandon their land […]
The eastern squat toilet is the world’s perfect eco-toilet. Come and look inside. Some people think they’re primitive, but I love them. The hole-in-the-floor Middle East squat toilets can be found in Turkey, Syria, Jordan and Egypt –– and likely in other Middle East countries I’ve yet to visit. They’re used in China too. Not […]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5kg1oOq9tY[/youtube] We’ve already written about how Friends of the Earth Middle East (FoEME) has joined forces with 350.org, an international campaign that hopes to inspire the world to create a sense of urgency among world leaders for changing policies that would effect climate change. They have been organizing a climate change protest to take place […]
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 […]
With the regional drought carrying on for its third year, Iraq is in a water bind as its rivers dry up. Turkey’s Hurriyet Daily News reports that Baghdad has urged Istanbul and Damascus to release water so that residents of southern Iraq don’t flee of thirst. The problem is that they are suffering from water […]
Way before there were electronic ways to condition our temperatures, cooling methods were built into the architecture of traditional Middle Eastern homes. Such as the beehive homes found in Syria.
Can’t stand the climate change heat? Why not move underground? For Reynard Loki and Jennifer Daniels, the future might lie, for some people in places such as Israel or Australia, in what they are calling Underground Desert Living Units, UDLU for short. Loki began working on the idea in March 2008, and he later found […]
If we’d thought that talk about global warming in the Middle East should stay in the future tense, news from Syria suggests a lot is going to change in these parts, and fast. A climate change domino effect has caused the eco-migration of villagers from their homes in about 160 Syrian villages, reports the AFP. Reporting […]
Jabal Moussa, Jordan So we all know that the Middle East is biospherically fascinating, but at the ongoing meeting of the UN International Coordinating Council of the Man and Biosphere last Tuesday, UNESCO took notice as well, adding more Middle Eastern sites to UNESCO’s World Network of Biosphere Reserves. In fact, for the first time, […]