Posted in Religion on Dec 18th, 2008
Traveling through the mountains of Judea I am always struck by the stark contrast between the mountainous areas where there are villages and where there are not. The differences can be as sharp as night and day. There are even places where people are living but the land seems barren and there are other places [...]
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Posted in Science & Technology on Dec 7th, 2008
Those who have been following the Red-Dead canal proposal, and all its controversies, know that a lot is at stake. The Dead Sea is dying because natural estuaries, such as the Jordan River, Ein Gedi bottled spring water and rainwater are not making it to its shores. Politicians think that by carving a tunnel from [...]
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Posted in Business & Politics on Sep 18th, 2008
There are few environmental topics in the Middle East more controversial than the proposed Red Sea-Dead Sea Canal to revive the Dead Sea, which has the potential to cause lasting damage to the composition of the sea’s ecosystem.
The multinational organization Friends of the Earth Middle East (FEME), who are working to build a peace park [...]
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Posted in Lifestyle & Culture on Sep 16th, 2008
Last week in our Green Prophets in Focus Series, we interviewed our resident Eco-Mum Sophie Ohana.
This week, our focus is on Hamutal Dotan, our expert on all things culinary and delicious. Hamutal is currently working as a web editor in Toronto and aspires to be a full time writer.
Read about Hamutal’s thoughts on sustainable food, [...]
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Posted in Business & Politics on Aug 20th, 2008
It’s a drawback to being popular: Litter has become a big problem on the coast of the freshwater Kinneret lake (the Sea of Galilee).
To take charge of the problem, Israel’s Ministry of Environmental Protection, the Israel Police force and the Kinneret Authority inaugurated a new environmental policing unit to clean up the coast.
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Posted in Science & Technology on Aug 14th, 2008
Well, that depends on how you look at it…
Scientists are predicting that climate change will cause upheavals in the patterns of rainfall, drought, floods, and desertification. The latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warns that temperatures in the Middle East have increased between 2-3 degrees Celsius in the last century, faster [...]
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Posted in Business & Politics on Aug 12th, 2008
Can environmental professionals from Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority help solve the epic water battles in California? How similar are the issues of water scarcity and political conflict in the Middle East to those in the Western United States? Can recent examples of successful conflict resolution and cooperation for environmental gains in the Middle East provide valuable lessons for [...]
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Posted in Business & Politics on Aug 5th, 2008
The chief scientist of the Ministry of Environmental Protection, Yishayahu Bar-Or, released a statement yesterday Aug. 4, (and here [in Hebrew]) warning of the well known consequences of global warming that are expected in Israel and the Eastern Mediterranean.
These include a rise in average temperature of 1.8 degrees Celsius already by 2020, a rise [...]
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Posted in Business & Politics on Aug 5th, 2008
Okay, first the bad news.
Well, perhaps we’d had better warn you that there is no good news in this piece: A new campaign has been launched in the UK by the NEF (new economics foundation) warning the world that according to their analysis, the world is just 100 months away from reaching the tipping point [...]
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Posted in Science & Technology on Aug 3rd, 2008
A new solution addresses the problem of water loss and promises farmers “more crop per drop”
A part of the global food crisis is the inefficiency of current irrigation methods. More irrigated water evaporates than reaches the roots of crops, amounting to an enormous waste of water and energy.
Tel Aviv University researchers, however, are investigating a [...]
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