The first ever world fair took place in 1851 at Prince Albert’s behest.  That fair was initiated to display participating nations’ industrial prowess.  The tradition continues with ever-increasing largesse, culminating in this year’s World Expo that officially opened yesterday, May 1^st.  Countries and corporations will display elaborate pavilions that best represent their cultural and industrial brand until the expo’s closure at the end of October, 2010, which is expected to draw 70 million spectators.  Israel’s half stone, half glass pavilion is one of several Middle Eastern pavilions on display, which in part highlights the region’s interest in cultural and business exchange with China.

In an article for the New York Times, Ted Plafker criticizes Shanghai’s expo theme – “Better Cities, Better Life” – as well as its goal to promote sustainable urban development practices.  He notes that, “the huge international event champions priorities that hardly seem to square with spending hundreds of millions of dollars on the construction of nearly 200 booths and buildings, nearly all of which are designed to last only for the six-month duration of the show.”

At this World Expo, it seems corporations trump countries in a stunning display of coordinated un-sustainability.  Sixty of the most profligate pavilions belong to large corporations, Plafker claims.  One notable exception, however, is Saudi Arabia’s $164 million national pavilion.  Called “Vitality of Life,” the pavilion displays a giant upside-down boat shaped like a moon that is surrounded by deserts and seas and 150 date palms.  The palms are planted with Chinese trees to draw attention to Saudi Arabia’s friendship with the Chinese.  The 6000 sq m pavilion features the largest Imax screen on earth, 1600sq m of pixels designed to showcase short films, and will celebrate its National Pavilion Day on September 23.

Plafker says that in addition to participant spendthrift, Shanghai spent $45 billion to prepare for the World Expo, which he says is roughly equivalent to what Beijing spent for the 2008 Olympics.  Despite this, much of that expenditure was used to improve the city’s infrastructure and Shanghai received kudos from the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) for managing pollution levels despite population growth.

Even so, at the end of October almost all of the pavilions will be removed or demolished; we at Green Prophet have to hope that residue materials will at least be recycled rather than sent to Shanghai’s landfills, and that the next Expo in South Korea will live up to its motto.

To learn more about your country’s exhibit at the Shanghai World Expo 2010, click here.

:: Via NY Times

For More News from Saudi Arabia:
Mecca Becomes Mecca for Drugs
AIA Names Saudi’s KAUST In 2010 Top Green Projects
Saudi Arabia to Build Musma Park – The Mideast’s Largest Environmental Tourism Park

Mecca province, home to the holiest site in Islam, has the highest rate of drug-related crime in Saudi Arabia, a university study has found. The national study, carried out by Dr. Ashraf Shilbi of the National Center for Youth Research at King Saud University in the capital Riyadh, calculated that the number of drug-related legal cases in Mecca province has steadily risen by around 1,000 each year. In 2009 it peaked at 9,000 cases.

“Drugs is certainly a problem in Saudi Arabia and every day you hear about the government killing someone for smuggling drugs,” Wajiha Al-Huwaidar, a former teacher, told The Media Line. “I would think that the problem is more pronounced in Mecca because it’s very crowded and very easy to get a visa to come to Saudi Arabia for Hajj or Umrah, so many people can come as drug dealers under the guise of a pilgrim.”

The study, first reported by the Al-Madinah daily, found the Saudi capital Riyadh to be second in the number of drug-related cases, followed by the provinces of Jazan, the Eastern Province, Asir, Madinah, Tabuk, Al-Qassim and Al-Jouf.

While drug abuse made up the majority of cases, drug trafficking was also found to be on the rise. Despite a Saudi stigma that drug smuggling is led by foreigners, the study found the vast majority of drug smuggling cases to be Saudi citizens, with foreigners making up only 22 percent of drug trafficking cases.

The study also found that over the last decade Saudi hospitals in the country’s capital and commercial center have recorded a tripling of the number of drug addicts receiving treatment. The number of drug addicts seeking treatment in the Saudi capital Riyadh, for example, were found to have tripled, from 13,520 in 200 to 40,515 in 2009. The number of addicts treated in Jeddah more than tripled, from 10,876 in 2000 to 35,857 in 2009.

Ahmed Al-Omran (links to his blog Saudi Jeans), an influential Saudi critic and blogger, said it was unclear why Riyadh and Jeddah had witnessed such a notable rise in drug use. ”There are likely many factors – unemployment, more people travelling inside and outside of the country, etc,” he said. “But it’s hard for me to speculate and the study should have looked more into the reasons for the rise in drug use.”

Al-Omran downplayed the importance of the study. ”Drugs are everywhere in the world, the Mecca region is big and is not just the holy city of Mecca,” he told The Media Line. “So it doesn’t seem very weird that there would be a high rate of drugs in Mecca province.”

“Whenever the government publishes the news that they have seized a large amount of drugs coming into the country it indicates that there is a problem of drugs in the country,” Al-Omran said. “But the government only manages to seize a small percentage of what’s in the market, so they also need to work on awareness and make sure families know the dangers of drug use.”

Shilbi’s research found the most popular illegal drug in Saudi Arabia to be the antidepressant Catptagon, followed by hashish, Qat (or gat), heroin, amphetamine, opium and cocaine.

Hashish, dried cannabis also known as ‘hash’, made up the largest proportion of the drugs confiscated by Saudi authorities. The volume of Hashish seized has steadily increased by 18 percent each year. Qat, a plant with an amphetamine-like stimulant, made up the majority of drug seizures in the southern province of Jazan, with more than 10,000 recorded seizures of the plant last year alone. Seizures of cocaine and opium were very rare and recorded only in the capital Riyadh and Saudi Arabia’s commercial center Jeddah.

The study found that drug dealers in Saudi tend to be students or workers, and those most vulnerable to drug abuse tend to be young men aged 20 to 30. Bachelors and the unemployed were also found to be demographic groups more at risk for drug abuse.

The Saudi Interior Ministry announced last week that drug enforcement officials had completed one of the largest drug busts in its history, arresting 195 individuals over four months on charges of drugs smuggling. Authorities also seized eight million tablets of Captagon, two tons of hashish, and more than 20 kilograms of pure heroin.

Drug trafficking is punishable by death in Saudi Arabia, regardless of the quantity being trafficked. The knock-on effect is that if drug traffickers take the risk of doing business in the Saudi kingdom, to make it worthwhile they will usually traffic huge volumes of drugs with large profit margins.

More on Middle East drugs and conflict with the environment and human health:
Hashish Shortage Stokes Bitterness in Egypt
Yemen’s Environmental and Social Problems Blamed on Chewing Gat
Afghan Opium Growers Get the Burn-Out

This article is reprinted courtesy of The Middle East News Source, The Media Line.

The American Institute of Architecture recently hailed The King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) as one of its top ten most environmentally responsible building designs.   This follows other “green” developments in Saudi Arabia, including the largest environmental tourism park, and a solar-powered desalination plant.  KAUST has bagged a few firsts:  it is the country’s first co-ed university as well as its first LEED certified building, and at 6.5 million sq feet, with 26 buildings built on 9,000 acres of land near Jeddah, on the Red Sea, it is also the largest Platinum certified building in the world.

It achieved this rating by meeting some of the most stringent USGBC’s LEED rating requirements.  Under transportation:  100 shared electric cars along with recharging stations, segway and bike shares, and 3 shuttle bus lines on campus.  Under renewable energy:  2 solar towers, along with solar thermal and photovoltaic panels, amounting to a total production of 4MW renewable energy.

A permanent plan will protect the local coral reef and mangrove habitat under habitat preservation.  Under materials, 37.8% was manufactured from within 500 miles of the site, 99.2% of wood was certified by Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), and 79% of construction waste was recycled or diverted from landfill.  100% of the campus water will be treated on site and there is a comprehensive recycling plan in place for glass, aluminum, plastic, metal, and cardboard.  Finally, the total power demand was reduced by approximately 24.5%.

The percentages are impressive, but Arndt raises this crucial point: “nearly two-thirds of the tens of thousands of tons of materials needed to construct this desert campus—paint, carpeting, furnishings, wood—had to be shipped in from more than 500 miles away. I don’t know how much greenhouse gas those vessels produced, but I do know that … they produced more carbon dioxide than 10 of the 39 industrialized nations originally included in the Kyoto Protocol. ”

There is no question that through competition and marketing, LEED promotes better building practices, and provides incentive – where otherwise there would be little – to produce more efficient buildings.  But thousands of tons of material?  Shipped to and constructed in the desert? This is sustainable?

Arndt quotes Colin Rohlfing, one of the HOK Designers on the KAUST project,  “It’s always a dilemma,” he said, concluding that the building was inevitable, that the king was going to build there in any case, and that they “had to make the best of it.”  We agree that if they must build, build better.   But all the Saudi money will not bring back Mother Nature’s diminishing resources again.

:: Via Business Week

More on so-called sustainable projects in the Middle East:
Re-Assessing Masdar City
What’s Sustainable about Masdar’s Foster+Partners?
Is Urjuan a Wise Expenditure of Qatar’s Oil and Gas Wealth?

Saudi Arabia is probably not on your list of dream vacation spots – especially if you’re a woman traveller, or want to work on your tan, or get back to nature. However, seeking to boost its tourist offerings as part of a wider effort to diversify its sources of revenues, the oil-rich kingdom announced on Arabian Business.complans earlier this month to build the largest environmental tourism park in the Middle East. The new project, called Musma Park, is slated for Hail province in north-central Saudi Arabia.

According to the website of the Saudi Commission for Tourism and Antiquities, Hail province “is rich with its beautiful natural sites represented in the mountains, deserts, and the botanical and zoological life … there are some caves, craters, and beautiful plateaus with great scenery and soft breeze.”

Saudi Arabia’s tourism market actually generated nearly $19 billion in revenues last year – accounting for about 6.5% of the country’s GDP – and could reach $64 billion by 2019, according to ArabianBusiness.com.

However, Islamic tourism – the hajj or umrah – currently accounts for much of the kingdom’s tourism traffic. New tourist developments such as Musma Park and a series of projects on the Red Sea coast are intended to serve as a “Mecca” for tourists who come for reasons unrelated to religion.

Neighboring Abu Dhabi is also conducting feasibility studies for developing eco-friendly desert resorts, similar to the Al-Maha resort in Dubai, with an eye toward attracting European tourists.

(Image via saudiembassy.net)

Green Prophet’s post on solar powered desalination plants earlier this year reported Saudi Arabia’s interest in harnessing solar energy to drive its growing array of desalination plants. This week the oil-rich kingdom announced a partnership with IBM to pursue this goal. King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST), Saudi Arabia’s leading R&D institute, will team with IBM to study the possibility of building a solar powered desalination plant in the city of Al Khafji, in the northeast of the country, according to a report in ArabianBusiness.com.

The solar-powered facility would feature ultra-high concentrator photovoltaic (UHCPV) technology, jointly developed by IBM and KACST, and could provide 30,000 cubic meters of water per day for over 100,000 people. Today, the most common methods used for seawater desalination are thermal technology and reverse osmosis.

“Saudi Arabia is the largest producer of desalinated water in the world, and we continue to invest in new ways of making access to fresh water more affordable,” said Dr Turki Al-Saud, a vice president at KACST.

“Our collaborative research with KACST has led to innovative technologies in the areas of solar power and of water desalination,” said Sharon Nunes, a vice president at IBM Big Green Innovations.

“By bringing these new technologies together, we will create an energy-efficient system we believe can be implemented across Saudi Arabia and around the world.”

Let’s hope other Middle East countries follow the lead. Desalination plants are energy intensive and don’t make sense, if they can’t be powered with a clean fuel source.

Image via Memri Economic Blog

Read more on desalination in Saudi Arabia:

Saudi Arabia to Replace Oil with Sun Power for Desalination Plants

Saudi Arabia Opens World’s Largest Desalination Plant

Japan and Saudi Arabia Plan Giant Desalination Equipment Plant to “Freshen Up” Regional Water Supplies

Countries in the Arab world are starting to wake up to the potential of solar energy, especially those with no known oil reserves. Morocco is the latest to announce its intentions to solar-ize the country in a $9 billion project, reports the Global Arab Network. When completed, by around the year 2020, Morocco could be supplying about 40% of its entire energy needs by way of the sun. The goals are ambitious, but Morocco’s officials say that the sunny North African country is clearly positioned to deliver: with 3,000 hours of sunshine a year, the country “feels” about 5 kWh per square metre per day.

According to the report, which is based on a late 2009 Reuters story, the country-wide project will include 5 solar power stations, each to produce 2000 MW of electricity in the regions of Ouarzazate, Ain Bni Mathar, Foum Al Oued, Boujdour and Sebkhat Tah.

“This is a bold but realistic project. We will guarantee all the technical and financial resources to make it succeed,” said the country’s Energy Minister Amina Benkhadra. The country is currently looking for tech partners, so prepare those tenders!

As the only North African country with no oil production, its ministers are eager to cut foreign gas and oil imports and to green the country’s carbon footprint. Meanwhile potential partners could include the World Bank, the European Commission, and Germany, and this new ambitious initiative could connect with Desertec, a coalition of 13 energy and technology companies which plans on creating a renewable energy grid in Africa and shipping the energy to Europe.

The Desertec Initiative was launched in 2009 with the intention of bringing together firms with experience in power generation, to build a series of concentrated solar power (CSP), photovoltaic (PV) and wind projects in the Middle East and North Africa region.

Other Arab countries has expressed their desire to go solar including Algeria, Qatar, Tunisia and Saudi Arabia. Jordan, Syria and Tunisia are also heading in the right direction by encouraging the use of domestic solar heating systems. Nearby in Israel, typically not mentioned by Arab news networks in a positive light, the use of such water heaters is quite widespread – even in the Palestinian Authority territories. Israel is also recognized as a world leader in innovating solar energy solutions. Cooperation with Morocco, of which many Israelis share a rich history, might ensue via this new solar announcement.

Solar panels are already used in some remote, off-grid, rural areas in Morocco, and a couple of windmills have already started producing clean power: one in Tangiers and another near Tarfaya. It will be a marvel and green miracle if Morocco goes on track to provide nearly 40% of its energy needs by way of the sun. And we look forward to reporting more news on this exciting announcement.

::Global Arab Network

More on solar power:
The Middle East Could Power World Three Times Over
MENASOL Conference to Tap Into North African-Middle East Solar Potential
Qatar and Syria Look To Turn Deserts Green With Solar Power

Saudi Arabia has been in the news a lot in regards to building desalination facilities, on which the Kingdom depends for most of its fresh water supplies. This includes what has been hailed as the worlds’ largest desalination facility in the Jubail Industrial Zone, on the shores of the Persian Gulf. But now, something different is in the works, as the Kingdom has reached an agreement  with two Japanese companies, Toyobo, and Itochu corporation, to build a plant in Saudi Arabia to construct the equipment used in the desalination plants, making it much easier to construct new water producing facilities as needed.

The new plant will be called the Arabian Japanese Membrane Company, and will combine the expertise of Toyobo, an expert in the manufacture of desalination membrane material with that of Itochu, which builds large manufacturing facilities. The two Japanese companies will work together with the Saudi infrastructure developer ACWA Holding to construct the plant, which will be located 150 km north of the port city of Jeddah in the Rabigh Technical Park on the Red Sea Coast.

Construction is scheduled to begin in 2011, and when completed, the company will manufacture reverses osmosis membrane elements for seawater desalination for the Kingdom’s increasing desalination needs. The technology in the plant will include  using “hollow fiber” membranes which are not only used extensively in desalination, but in other uses as well, including the medical field (blood fractionation), water purification, gas separation,  and azeotropic mixture separation using pervaporation.

Toyobo’s famous membranes technology is already utilized in most of the largest desalination plants in the Middle East; and boasts 80% of the seawater desalination membrane market in Saudi Arabia and over half the share in the Middle East/Gulf region. The third partner ITOCHU has considerable experience building seawater desalination plants in Saudi Arabia since 1970’s.

Estimated total investment in the giant facility will be around $352 million and will be the first plant of its kind to manufacture reverse osmoses desalination elements in the MENA region.

While this idea will be a big boost to the region’s ability to produce fresh water from desalination, little mention was made as to what power source will be used to manufacture these membranes, as well as to power future desalination themselves. We did mention the idea of using solar power for desalination plants in a previous article, however, in which the Kingdom is planning to integrate solar energy to power future desalination facilities, and is in line with the Kingdom’s desire to become a member of the international renewable energy group IRENA.

But the new venture between Saudi Arabia and Japan, does point the importance of international cooperation in projects which will help increase the supply of fresh water supplies to a region where this resource is sorely lacking.

:: desalt.net/

More articles on Saudi Clean Tech and Desalination Projects:

Saudi Arabia Opens World’s Largest Desalination Plant

Saudi Arabia to Use Solar Energy to Power Desalination Plants

DOW Chemical and Saudi Arabia’s KAUST University Vow to Clean Up Environment

This was the second consecutive year that Egypt participated in the international event. Amal Habib, a 28-year-old photographer based in Cairo, visited the Cairo Tower at the assigned time. She was skeptical of promises by the Egyptian government to turn off the lights of the tower, but was gladly surprised to see the darkness.

“I was kind of shocked, but in a good way when I went to the tower expecting to show the lies of the government toward climate change initiatives, but I was wrong. The lights were off,” she said.

Minister of Environmental Affairs Maged George had announced earlier in the week Egypt’s official participation in the event, which included a number of governmental offices, institutions and major archaeological sits. The blackout was a shock to tourists, including Peter Howard, an American tourist who had thought about going to the Pyramids on Saturday night to view them in the spotlights that usually accompany them.

“When I asked my hotel concierge they said that for an hour they would be off, so I decided to relax and not go,” he said, adding that the move by Egypt to turn off the major sites was “a good move to show people that just a little action can go a long way.”

Other Arab nations participating in the event were Qatar, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

Europe’s best known landmarks — including the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben and Rome’s Colosseum — fell dark Saturday along with Egypt’s fabled sites. Following Sydney’s Opera House and Beijing’s Forbidden City switching off, the rest of the world quickly followed suit, creating the largest global protest in the name of climate change to date.

Four thousand cities in more than 120 countries — starting with the remote Chatham Islands off the coast of New Zealand — voluntarily switched off Saturday to reduce energy consumption, though traffic lights and other safety features were unaffected, organizers said.

“Tackling climate change is urgent and vital to both safeguard our environment and our children’s future. We can make a difference if we act now and act together,” said British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who switched off lights at his Downing Street residence in London.

But, the question arose in Egypt and across the Middle East, what impact will it have on climate change education? For Omar bin Taleb, an environmental consultant in Oman, who spoke to Bikya Masr via telephone on Sunday morning, he said that it will at least “get people thinking about” climate change and wondering why the lights went off.

“If we can reach a handful of people in convincing them of the importance of this kind of event, we will have succeeded,” he began. “It is important and the world must not stop. We, as humans, have to deal with climate change on a grassroots basis and learn how the power we consume affects the climate change and the planet.”

More on Earth Hour in the Middle East:

Dubai’s Burj Khalifa Will Tower in Darkness

Earth Hour 2009 Sweeps Across the Middle East

(Image via AP/Nasser Nouri, 2009)

(This post was first published on Bikya Masr)

The imported fish and seafood industry: shrimp, prawns, and various species of both fresh and salt water fish has received some unfavorable attention in the American news media thanks to filthy fish products being imported into the USA and other Western countries (links to Youtube video).

But these kinds of problems could change if aqua farmers in Asia and other locations adopted ideas now being undertaken by Saudi Arabia’s National Prawn Company, noted as one of the “world’s largest integrated pawn farms” in an article in the website ArabNews.com.

Located near the Arabian Red Sea coastal town of Al-Lith, 170 km south of Jeddah, Saudi’s National Prawn Company prawn farm prides itself as using organic methods to grow the prawns without the use of chemicals, fertilizers or antibiotics. The company recently appointed Frederic Millet, a French aquaculture consultant, who has been involved in a number of such projects, including a large shrimp farm off the coast of Ecuador

Millet at Work

Millet’s aquaculture techniques are part of what is known as the Blue Revolution in which over a third of all fish and a quarter of world shrimp production come from aquaculture, one of the fastest growing farming methods in the world.

The ecological importance of work being done by aquaculture specialists like Millet is to produce a high quality product without using chemicals or synthetic growth stimulants (such as antibiotics) which are also used extensively in poultry farms, and beef cattle production, as well as in aquaculture.

Eating filtered sewage

There is a downside of aquaculture and poorly processed sea foods coming from countries like Thailand and China in which not only chemicals and antibiotics are extensively used, but also using sewage and industrial wastewater grow both fish and shrimp products which wind up in restaurants and on the dinner tables of people living in countries thousands of miles of away. We know how China regards standards of production, getting caught using lead and other fatal chemicals in products and children’s toys, so would you trust them with your food?

Millet’s philosophy involves in working with and not abusing the prawns’ natural ecosystem:

“We do not push the ecosystem to its limit. We prefer to extend the system to the maximum that is sustainable through an “All In All Out” strategy within the capabilities of the local environment in a way that leaves it in good condition.”

The NPC (pictured below) decided to work towards a longer term growth plan (20 years) instead of a shorter “5 year plan” that many aquaculture companies adhere to, which includes careful preparation of the ponds in which the prawns are grown, and the integration of all areas of operation, including breeding, feeding, and cleaning of the ponds in order to prevent the outbreak of disease and to insure a high level of sustainability which results in a high quality product.
Saudi Arabia’s antibiotic-free shrimp farm. So close to the sea, does beg the question: what is the shrimp “waste” doing to the environment.

What’s haram and kosher about it?

In contrast to Jewish Law in which “only fish with fins and scales” are permitted to be eaten, Islamic Law does allow for shrimps and prawns to be consumed, as well and “fish with scales.”

Other kinds of shell fish, including, crabs, mollusks, as well as smooth skinned fish, like sharks, are considered to be “Haram” or forbidden

NPC, with Millet in charge of quality and sustainability, wants the prawns to have a “minimal impact on the environment, and uses low density stocking in its 10-hectare ponds, strict biomass thresholds, and carefully monitors and manages water quality and oxygen levels 24 hours a day.

::National Prawn Company

Image via dcmetroblogger

Read more articles on pollution and chemical impacts on fish and marine life:
Hunt for Air France Flight 447 Brings Marine Garbage Problem to The Surface

Polluting Eilat Fish Farms Moved to Mediterranean

Persian Gulf “Mermaids” Face Manmade Environmental Threats

In order to better understand the needs of their consumers, and in particular their younger consumers in the Middle East, LG Electronics launched a three-month competition for what it referred to as “Conceptualife” kitchen design.  The company appealed to students all over the Middle East and African region in order to find out where this generation of designers feels should go into a kitchen.

Hamad Malek, the LG Director of marketing and communications for LG in the Middle East and Africa, said that “we feel great ideas can come from raw fresh minds, hence the students.  The sheer design and technology elements incorporated into the designs gives us a good understanding of what consumers are looking for.”

Nine hundred university students entered the initial part of the competition, which was eventually narrowed down to a shortlist of eight students from the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and South Africa.

The winner, announced a few weeks ago and pictured above, was Ali Kajuee from Iran.  His eco-friendly design, called “Ecoquina” featured a combination of Eastern and Western aesthetics.  The design also included visible water tanks (to remind consumers of their water usage and urge them to be more water efficient).  Water efficiency was a common theme among many of the contestants’ designs.

Reiterating the motive behind the competition, Mr. Ki Wan Kim, CEO of LG Electronics Middle East & Africa, said that “we want to tap into the youngest and brightest minds across the region and offer them the opportunity to show off their skills to the greater public.  This competition will provide us with invaluable insight into where the next generation of consumers perceive product designs and features to be heading.”

Hopefully the next generation of consumers is heading in a greener direction.  We look forward to seeing more designs like “Ecoquina” in the future.

:: Gulf News

Read more about ways you can go green in your kitchen right now::

12 Tips for Saving Water in the Kitchen

NatureMill’s Urban Compost Device for Composting in Cities and Apartments

Think Again: Cook Up Some New Ideas For Using Those Dusty Kitchen Appliances