Here’s a sneak peek of my latest article for Aquila Magazine’s Earth Issue. It’s all about indigenous populations making the most of their ancient traditions to cope with an increasingly unpredictable climate. As well as highlighting the continued importance of ancient water tunnels (called aflaj) in Oman, I spoke to an expert on community adaption in Bangladesh about the floating gardens (called baira) which are providing a lifeline to flooded communities. There’s also a snippet on the amazing work of Hassan Fathy in Egypt…

Want to read more? Well all you have to do is download (how eco is that?!) a copy of the latest Aquila Magazine here. It’s only a couple of dollars for a mag jam-packed with goodness. Go on, you know you want to!

Alzainah Albabtain, a 22 year old student, is growing her own food in the scorching heat of Kuwait and wants others to give it go too

A green fingered student from Kuwait is taking the blogosphere by storm with her ‘It All Grows’ blog. Filled to the rafters with gorgeous photos of lovely fruit and veg, recipes, and gardening tips, Alzainah wants to prove that “good fruits and vegetables don’t have to travel across the world to make it to your plate.” I caught up with her to find out how she got hooked on gardening and her insider tips for growers in the Middle East.

What inspired you to get your garden started?

I’ve always been fascinated by nature and wildlife, but never by gardening and how food is produced because, just like most people in Kuwait, the idea of growing food was quite foreign. I used to think that it took large expensive greenhouses a hundred kilometres away in Wafra with countless staff and complicated fertilizers to produce vegetables in Kuwait, until one of my relatives mentioned her 10 year old grandson’s cherry tomatoes, I was baffled! He grew cherry tomatoes in a container – I followed with questions like “outdoors? In our weather?” “Is it possible?”

I was completely shocked, and thought to myself, if a 10 year old can do it, I can at least try. The next day I went and bought seeds of whatever I found. I planted them in my back yard, under some palm trees, and with skepticism, I checked on them every other day. Once the seeds sprouted I started taking beautiful Micro photos, to show to my family. In a short time with a lot of research, I managed to turn my entire indoor pool into a greenhouse of cherry tomatoes. After this gratifying experience, I was hooked, I found myself extremely passionate about gardening in Kuwait.

What have been the biggest barriers you have faced in getting your garden to bloom?

First, it was figuring out what grows when. All the research I was doing left me hungry to learn more, but I was having trouble relating general gardening principles to our desert conditions. Plant care is so different, and the seasons are the complete opposite.
It took me a while to figure out the seasons here, its like this; a short warm season, a long cool season, then short warm again, and then summer during which gardeners take a break.

Another issue was organic pest control. There is so little offered in Kuwait when it comes to organic products, so it took me a while to find what I use now, which is organic insecticidal soap. I would go to plant nurseries and for any problem there was always a chemical solution, whether for fertilizing or pest control and I refused to use any of their recommendations on my plants. To me, it just didn’t make sense to spray something which you need to wear a gas mask to handle, on the plants I wanted to eat.

You’ve been gardening for over a year now. What tips would you give people want to grow their own food in the scorching heat of the Middle East?

It’s the blog I’ve started last year, I’ve actually been gardening for much longer.
The tips would be, to start with something easy, to do your basic research on what plant you’re growing, and to make your own compost, because its the best fertilizer there is.
You cant go wrong by starting with basil and arugula, grow them in simple potting mix in a sunny spot, any time from October to January or from February to May as they don’t like it too cold. Both plants are fast growing, easy, and delicious.

You’re right that you can’t grow in the scorching heat but you also can’t grow in the frost which other climates have to deal with. In our case we have three really hot months, (even if things did grow, I wouldn’t want to stand over or take care of them in the heat) but people look past the 9 months of good weather! And you also cant grow anything in the sand, who says you have to? Good soil is so easy to find and make, so we really have no excuse to why we think it’s so crazy to grow fresh food.

Why do you think it’s important to encourage your readers to use organic products?

It’s organic practices that make your greens superior to those at the supermarket. The joy of picking something and eating it right away without worrying about insecticides or preservative sprays is unbelievable. A big part of organic gardening is using compost, and making your own is the best thing to do, homemade compost recycles garden and kitchen scraps into beautiful dark fertilizer, which keeps plants happy all season long.

Water shortages are a real issue in the region – what tips do you have to grow with limited water?

Growing in raised beds like I do, gives you complete control over your soil, and compost rich soil with peat moss, helps retain water, and minimizes water loss.
Drip irrigation is a way to control water use and deliver water directly to the plant. Another good way to prevent loss of moisture is using mulch to cover the soil surface.

Favourite crop and your favourite recipe?

My favorite crop to grow in Kuwait is Bright Lights Rainbow Swiss Chard, because its absolutely gorgeous, with bright magenta and yellow ribs and large dark shiny leaves, its highly nutritious and does amazingly well from October to June. Thats a very long time if you ask me.
I like to sauté it as a side dish with some almonds and garlic oil.

What would you tell someone thinking of starting a garden but is little worried about lack of costs/time/expertise?

I would recommend starting small, with a potted plant, and see how it goes from there. Start with something easy, like herbs and leafy greens.
Most importantly, the internet is your best friend when it comes to gardening, I’ve learned everything I know from online research and youtube tutorials.
In fact, I created my blog to help others, to share my successes and challenges and prove how beautiful our gardens can grow.

:All images and photos courtesy of Alzainah Albabtain at It All Grows.

:Originally published at GreenProphet.com 

I speak to Mario Cucinella the architect behind Gaza’s eco schools about building under conflict, water, education and bringing hope to a desperate region

Early 2013 will see the launch of a green school which will collect rainwater and regulate internal temperature using thermal technologies. Whilst such a project would not be noteworthy in Europe, this project is coming to the energy-scarce, water-poor and conflict-ridden region of the Gaza Strip. Constructing a green building in such a region definitely comes with a whole cache of problems- it also comes with a whole load of benefits. Building green schools that save water and reduce the amount of energy needed offers huge benefits to the people of Gaza. I caught up with Mario Cucincella, the architect behind the project to find out more.

Aburawa: Looking back at the profile of your work, most of the projects you are involved in are based in Italy. How did you get involved in the scheme to bring eco schools to Gaza?

Cucinella: I got involved in this project as I was invited to a conference by the Italian government which was about the future of Palestine and how a green economy could help Palestine’s economy and encourage development. At that meeting I met with UNRWA which is the UN organisation for Palestinian refugees and we talked about presenting a project about the green buildings I had worked on in the last couple of years as they were interested in the integration between green issues and architecture.

They took me to visit refugee camps and we went to Gaza to see the schools and so I proposed to them an idea of building a different quality of school. I mean, UNRWA builds a lot of schools as they are in charge of education and health and social problems- so they build schools, hospitals and lots of other things- and there was a big programme to build one hundred schools in Gaza and they were really interested in a new style or standard of building. Well, these things grow very fast and they were excited about my proposals and I guess, here we are.

Aburawa: There has been lots of press attention around the concept of green schools- could you tell us about some of the green features of the Gaza schools?

Cucinella: Well as you know, Gaza has a real issue with access to lots of resources. So for example, water is really polluted and 40% of the population still don’t have access to potable water. There’s also significant energy blackout and so that does affect how you can run schools and hospitals. The first idea was to collect rainwater as they don’t collect rainwater and in Gaza there are between 100-600mm of water a square a year- which is not lot but it’s still free water. They also don’t recycle water so the principle is to be able to collect maximum water for the school.

The other issue is that the schools are very low quality and they are not suited to their environment. In the summer the buildings are very hot and it’s hard for children to focus on their studies when it’s 38 degrees in the classroom. So another important feature is creating a sufficient thermal mass so that energy is stored and temperature can be better regulated. These two are not very complex principles but when you put them together you get something quite special which can really improve the people’s quality of life. And that was the agenda behind these buildings.

In Gaza it is notoriously difficult to construct buildings as there are issues around the ability to bring in materials due to the blockade. How will you be working around these restrictions to make sure the schools are built?

Cucinella: Well, it’s a complicated situation because as you know you can find almost any type of material in Gaza due to the tunnels but the problem is that the United Nations cannot buy anything from the black market. So everything has to come from Israel and that is slowing the process but we are hoping to make some of the materials in Gaza on site so that we can employ more people. But we will still need to bring in the pre-fabrication materials into Gaza before we can start.

In the last couple of months, the conflict between Gaza and Israel has flared up with both sides exchanging fire and a number of casualties in Gaza. How does this impact the progress of the schools?

Cucinella: This conflict has been going on now for more than forty years and sadly, you come to see the situation as the norm. It’s been like this for some time and there isn’t much you can do – the UN has been building schools and hospitals throughout the conflict and they accept that this is the situation that they are working in. There was a discussion at one stage about whether building green schools in a place where it is difficult to find food was a good idea but the thinking was that this is still very important. To design new schools and imagine a new life for the people of Gaza – it’s a different approach to humanitarian action. The project is also part of a programme of re-education with local engineers and also teaching the staff and pupils how to look after a green building. I mean giving schools free water and also the means to regulate the temperature are so important for the Gazan population.

We also hoping that our green approach will be part of the solution to the demographic boom in Gaza where people are struggling to build homes and schools with the resources they have. So, these (green buildings) are actually really useful for Gaza. Indeed, we are currently working with refugee camps in the West Bank around how we can improve the quality of life for people living in the camps. And how can we implement technologies such as solar panels and thermal technologies that help make them more autonomous from Israel.

What have the reactions been like to the project? Are they mostly negative or positive and has there been some reluctance to embrace the concept of a green school in the Middle East?

In the beginning it was a little difficult as people are naturally reluctant to change but after you explain the case and the changes that the school could have on the conditions the children study in, they recognise the benefits of the project. In fact when we presented the project at a conference I was surprised how optimistic and enthusiastic people were and they were saying if you can do this project in Gaza, you could do any project anywhere in the world! I mean we worry about this catastrophic vision of the world where there are no resources, no money, no energy and basically you don’t have to dream that in Gaza- it’s already like this. In a way, what I came away with is that the frugality of people is greater than any oppression – people are strong and are able to adapt to really difficult situations.

For me, it was also really exciting talking to the engineering students in Gaza – these people don’t really have any future, there is no work in Gaza and yet they go to school, they go to university and study engineering because they hope that something will change. For me, that was really inspiring. And I guess one day or another, this story of conflict will be finished. Maybe that day will be tomorrow or maybe it will be in another two hundred years but it will be over. Also when you are there you feel that the people of Gaza are more optimistic about their future than the people on the outside.

Who is the project financed by and when can we expect to see the first school to be opened?

The project is financed by the Islamic Development Bank but I also want to add that without UNRWA and the support of the General Commissioner, this project would have very difficult and almost impossible. We are going to Gaza in April and in the summer we are going to start construction so the first building should be open at the start of next year in 2013. It will be probably be six months of work. I think what’s really exciting about this project is that when you work in Europe, there is always a choice or another option, but when you deal with sustainable development in a place like Gaza it’s a real challenge. To be able to apply  our knowledge and skills in a completely different region and see that it is really helpful is really inspiring.

Around three weeks ago on a late Tuesday morning, Israeli soldiers armed with a truck and a digger entered the Palestinian village of Amniyr and destroyed nine water tanks. One week later, Israeli forces demolished water wells and water pumps in the villages of Al-Nasaryah, Al-Akrabanyah and Beit Hassan in the Jordan Valley. In Bethlehem, a severe water shortage have led to riots in refugee camps and forced hoteliers to pay over the odds for water just to stop tourists from leaving.

Palestinians insist that the Israeli occupation means that they are consistently denied their water rights which is why they have to live on 50 litres of water a day while Israeli settlers enjoy the luxury of 280 litres. Clearly, water is at the heart of the Israel-Palestine conflict, but commentators are now insisting that shared water problems could help motivate joint action and better co-operation between both sides, which could in turn help end the conflict.

“It’s a shame that water is being used as a form of collective punishment when it could be used to build trust and to help each side recognise that the other is a human being with water rights,” says Nader Al-Khateeb, the Palestinian director of the environmental NGO Friends of the Earth Middle East (FoEME).

“We should be using water as a tool for peace and to bridge the gap of confidence in the region - not to create a water crisis,” he adds. As part of his work with FoEME - which also operates in Israel and Jordan - Al-Khateeb says he has already witnessed the success of co-operative water projects. Over the past ten years, the FoEME “Good Water Neighbors” initiative has brought together 29 cross-border communities to encourage them to work together to resolve shared water problems.

According to Gidon Bromberg, the Israeli director of FoEME, the project has managed to leverage around $120 million in investments to help build sewerage plants and replace old and leaky water pipes. Most of this aid, which has come through agencies such as USAID, World Bank, the EU and other foreign governments, has gone to the occupied Palestinian territories. “There are mutual benefits to be had through co-operative work which identifies common interests and we’ve seen physical improvements on the ground. Nothing speaks louder than the investment of $120m,” said Bromberg.

Co-operative work on water issues has also been able to tackle wider political aspects of the Israeli occupation. Bromberg recalls the case of the Palestinian village of Wadi Fuqin and Israeli community of Tzur Hassadeh whoworked together to tackle water issues in 2010 but also came together to stop the separation wall from being built between their communities. “Till this day that wall hasn’t been built which shows that working together on water can build real trust between individuals and presents a model where everyone benefits.”

International backing

It’s not just locally based environmental groups that think that water may be the solution to the Middle East’s problems. This year a report titled “Blue Peace: Rethinking Middle East Water” was released by the Strategic Foresight Group and concluded that water could be a useful “instrument of peace and co-operation” in the region. Funded by Swiss and Swedish governments, the report promoted the concept of a “Blue Peace” which states that, if countries work together to protect water and the environment, this could secure peace in their own countries as well as the region.

Ambika Vishwanath, the principal researcher of the report says that we must move on from the focus on land in the Israel-Palestine conflict. “History shows that using land as a means to achieve peace and co-operation has not worked and therefore it’s only prudent that we try to achieve the same through water. New avenues are worth attempting … if not the problem is only likely to worsen.”

While the arguments for increased co-operation between Israeli and Palestinian communities when it comes to water are compelling, they do sideline the fact that it is the Palestinians that disproportionately suffer due to deliberate Israeli government policies. Cara Flowers, part of the Emergency Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (EWASH) Advocacy Task Force in the West Bank said: “Don’t get me wrong, there are great projects doing some really important work – but what can small organisations achieve without government support? I think that we’re very limited without a large shift in government policy and I think that’s what we should be working towards and focusing less on communities who have limited ability to change the circumstances.”

Under the Oslo agreement, Israel did recognise the water rights of Palestinians, but this failed to translate into fair policies. Today, Israel over-extracts water from underground aquifers located in the West Bank for its own citizens and also sells back some of the water to water-short Palestinians at a high price. Water development projects in Palestine face cumbersome Israeli bureaucratic restrictions and delays which mean that more than200,000 Palestinians in the West Bank remain unconnected to a water network and 95 per cent of water in Gaza is unfit for human consumption due to high levels of pollution.

This systematic denial of water rights by Israel also hinders the Palestinian economy. According to a 2009 report by the World Bank, the cost to the economy of foregone opportunities in irrigated agriculture due to water shortages was as high as ten per cent of GDP and 110,000 jobs. Indeed, water remains one of the five issues up for debate to reach a final peace agreement alongside the status of Jerusalem, refugees, borders and the Israeli settlements.

Problem can’t wait for change in government policy

Despite these Israeli policies, Bromberg and Al-Khateeb of FoEME insist that joint water community projects can’t wait for a radical shift in government policy – which, they add, is unlikely under the current right-wing Netanyahu-led coalition. “One of the most frustrating aspects of our work is to see the lack of political leadership at all levels,” says Bromberg. “It’s something we all have to deal with in the Middle East. Governments here don’t lead, they have to be led and civil society plays a crucial role in how that happens.

“Community action is the way to create the political will because it embarrasses the government, it raises questions about why they are not doing enough and acting in the interests of their own community.”

Bromberg points out that both Palestinians and Israelis are suffering under the current water arrangements as the lack of waste-water infrastructure in the Palestinian territories means that Israelis have to deal with Palestinian sewage discharge. “The environment can’t wait for a final peace agreement,” he remarks.

Maybe not, but joint community action alone cannot change the Palestinian water dependency on Israel either says Amjad Aliewi, a Palestinian water expert at the Ramallah-based NGO House of Water and Environment. Aliewi insists that water will bring people together and encourage peace only if the Israeli government is willing to talk about Palestinian water rights and grants them full control over their own resources. “I mean, once we have that independence, if we want to construct joint projects and pipes then that it is fine – but we don’t want to solve the problem in a way that there is a pipeline and Israel controls the tap. That is not a solution.”

For Aliewi, Palestinian water independence must come first, as, without it, any co-operation is problematic. When I ask Aliewi if he thinks that Israel is over-extracting water from Palestinian sources because it needs the water or for political and economic reasons he replies that if Israel really needed the water it wouldn’t allow Israeli settlers to dump their sewage on Palestinian land and pollute shared water sources. “This is an act of occupation and it needs to end,” he adds.

The disparity of the water situation in Palestine is nowhere more apparent than in the illegal Israeli settlements of the West Bank – where settlers enjoy water on tap whilst Palestinians struggle to pay for water from tanks. Israeli settlers, however, fail to see a problem with the water situation.

Israeli’s deny water crisis

David Ha’ivri, leader of the Jewish communities of Shomron which covers the northern West Bank, said he suspected that any notions of water disparity between Palestinians and Israelis were “misinformation spread by those interested in giving a twisted impression of the actual facts”. He pointed to a water park in a Palestinian town north of Tubas as evidence of the lack of water shortages in the West Bank, and said that Arabs needed to make the most of Israeli water infrastructure developments. Ha’ivri did however state that more mutual work to preserve water between Arabs and Israelis would be wise. Both Mekorot, Israel’s national water company, and the Israeli Water Authority were contacted but were unavailable for comment.

Whether community projects, political lobbying or a focus on Palestinian water independence is the way forward, it is clear that action is needed to rectify the scale of the water inequality between Israel and Palestine. As Bromberg states: “Peace won’t just fall upon us, we all need to be working towards creating a lasting, just and fair agreement on water.”

Follow Arwa Aburawa on Twitter: @arwa_journalist

A recent GreenProphet blog which looks at the problem with green projects that are planned for the illegal Israeli settlements. 

Around a week ago, the Israeli government announced that 10% of its renewable energy quota would be going to the West Bank. This means that literally millions (some have put the estimate at $660 million) will be heading to the territories to encourage solar, wind and biofuel energy development.

Whilst this move has been welcomed by green activists in principle, there have been concerns over the fact that solar fields will be built in the Israeli settlements of the West Bank. The continuing growth of the Jewish settlements across the West Bank is one of the most widely contested issues in the region and is considered to be a major barrier to Israel and Palestine reaching a peace deal. So does green progress outweigh these political downfalls?

In the past, Israeli settlements have struggled to secure approval for renewable energy projects and were not assigned a quota of the renewable projects of the Israeli state. This all changed around a week ago when 10 percent of the allocation for renewable energy projects were shifted to the West Bankand the Israeli government placed a cap on settlement projects of 46 megawatts for large solar fields, 80 megawatts for wind power and 21 megawatts for biofuels. Thirty megawatts of the national 300 megawatt allocation has been given to the settlements.

According to estimates by the Jerusalem Post, if all the quota in renewable energy in the West Bank settlements are used it would add up to an investment of around $660million. The policy shift also means that various roof-top solar panel projects in the Ma’ale Adumim settlement were given the all clear.

You could argue that green energy projects need to be celebrated where ever they are but I personally find it hard to celebrate a policy which appears to be further jeopardizing the chances of peace between Israel and Palestine.

Although all Israelis (Arabs and Jews) are theoretically allowed to make use of the government quotas, only Israeli settlers have Israeli citizenship in the West Bank and so Palestinians can’t make use of the renewable energy quotas allocation. What’s more, Palestinian themselves struggle to secure permission from Israel to build their own renewable projects. As Hanna Siniora, co-CEO of the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information, told the Jerusalem Post:

“Palestinians want to build renewable energy, but most of the land at the moment is under the administration of Israel’s defense ministry, Area C. We are not allowed to create projects in Area C. Renewable energy is as important to Palestinians as it is to Israelis, so maybe they should be given an equal chance to do this.”

:: Image via Jurvetson/flickr of a solar field in the Negev Desert.

:: Info via Jerusalem Post : Originally published at Greenprophet.com