The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) issued a special alert on the food security situation in Syria this past week, voicing serious concern over the state of food security, especially for vulnerable groups, because of continued civil unrest since March 2011. According to the Syrian Central Bureau of Statistics, inflation increased between June […]
Libyan sculptor Ali Al-Wakwak has transformed the charred remnants of war into inspiring creations Around a week ago, Libyans celebrated the first anniversary of the uprising against Muammar Gaddafi. It’s certainly been a turbulent year for Libyans and although the future isn’t as certain as some would hope, thousands took to the streets to celebrate […]
With farming traditions that are already “organic”, embattled Syria can easily become an important organic food producer, based on climate, practices and location to Europe. This past January President Bashar Assad issued Legislative Decree No. 12 for 2012 related to organic farming in Syria. The decree aims at laying the foundation for developing organic production […]
The Hezbollah is going green with an eco-jihad as a tactic of war against Israel. On October 9, 2010, Hezbullah‘s Secretary General, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, briefly came out of hiding to mark the end of Hezbullah’s campaign to plant million trees in Lebanon to restore the country’s forests. This campaign was organized by Jihad al-Binaa, […]
Yemen may be water poor but the country has a rich heritage of managing scare water resources effectively through community co-operation
Axes of power are changing in the Middle East and Israel and Cyprus as an alliance could shift energy focus away from some OPEC oil countries. The decision for Cyprus to explore its undersea natural gas wells has Turkish government officials crying foul. Turkey occupies the northern half of Cyprus and the southern half is […]
The Great Man Made River: 70 percent of Libya’s fresh water comes from it. Muammar Gaddafi, the eccentric strongman of Libya for more than 42 years and often referred to as the Mad Dog of the Middle East, wound up dying like a dog at the hands of his own people. Now that he is […]
Turkish PM Erdogan at the UN: His way or no way There’s a lot more for southern Cyprus to be alarmed about these days concerning its commitment to explore for natural gas offshore. First of all, there is the environmental factor dealing with undersea drilling off Cyprus, which could be damaging for an island so […]
Taliban holds fire thanks to tooth-sized nut. Image via the NY Times. Some say all is fair in love and war, but for guerrilla warfare between the Taliban and Haqqani in Afghanistan, there are limits. Guns go down for pine nut season. Pine nuts are those delicious, tooth-sized nuts which are a staple in pesto. […]
Humanitarian crises erupt in Libya, Yemen and Syria as the populations revolt against their oppressive leaders From the very start, the price of food has played an important role in the emerging Arab Spring which has swept across Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Jordan, Yemen, Syria and Libya. As food prices rose so did the anger in […]
Nina Rahal-Lott, is a trained architect who wants to transform the Badawi refugee camp in Lebanon from an ‘environmental catastrophe’ into a green haven Born and raised in Beirut and trained as an architect, Nina Rahal-Lott is a women with a vision. After witnessing the dire conditions that Palestinian refugees live in across Lebanon, she […]
The Palestinian environmentalist Taleb Al Harithi was born in a small town near Hebron called Idna in 1955. After gaining his PhD in 1986, he became a professor for Earth and Environmental Sciences and now works as a consultant for environmental health in the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Hebron alongside his post as a […]
Azzam Alwash (left), director of the environmental organisation Nature Iraq, talks with a Marsh Arab who lives in the Mesopotamian Marshlands of Iraq In the first part of this two-piece feature, Azzam Alwash the director of Nature Iraq, spoke to us about his warm memories as a child visiting the Mesopotamian Marshlands of Iraq with […]
In this two-part feature, Azzam Alwash tells us how he achieved the impossible and helped restore the Marshlands of south Iraq after its destruction under the Saddam regime Travelling through the Mesopotamian Marshlands of Iraq on a boat with his father, Azzam Alwash felt he had glimpsed a garden of Eden- a land of abundance, […]
Libya’s government forces could use their control over enormous water reserves as a weapon in the current conflict between Gaddafi and rebels trying to overthrow his regime The ‘Great Man-Made River’, a great civil water works project dubbed by Gaddafi as the 8th wonder of the world, was built to resolve Libya’s severe water scarcity […]