Skip to main content

Home/ International Politics of the Middle East/ Group items tagged resources

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
Ed Webb

UAE meddled in U.S. political system, intelligence report says - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...ddled-us-politics-intel-report

USA US UAE espionage influence propaganda lobbying

shared by Ed Webb on 02 Dec 22 - Cached
  • The relationship is unique. Over the years, the United States has agreed to sell the UAE some of its most sophisticated and lethal military equipment, including MQ-9 aerial drones and advanced F-35 fighter jets, a privilege not bestowed on any other Arab country over concern about diminishing Israel’s qualitative military edge.Some of the influence operations described in the report are known to national security professionals, but such activities have flourished due to Washington’s unwillingness to reform foreign-influence laws or provide additional resources to the Department of Justice. Other activities more closely resemble espionage, people familiar with the report said.
  • The UAE has spent more than $154 million on lobbyists since 2016, according to Justice Department records. It has spent hundreds of millions of dollars more on donations to American universities and think tanks, many that produce policy papers with findings favorable to UAE interests.
  • Since 2012, it has been the third-biggest purchaser of U.S. weapons and built what many consider the most powerful military in the Arab world by cultivating close ties to the U.S. political, defense and military establishment.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • The UAE is far from alone in using aggressive tactics to try to bend the U.S. political system to its liking. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Israel, Taiwan and scores of other governments run influence campaigns in the United States in an effort to impact U.S. policy.
  • But the intelligence community’s scrutiny of the UAE indicates a heightened level of concern and a dramatic departure from the laudatory way the country is discussed in public by U.S. secretaries of state and defense and presidents, who routinely emphasize the “importance of further deepening the U.S.-UAE strategic relationship.”
  • People who shared information about the report declined to provide a copy of it. They said the activities attributed to the UAE in the report go well beyond mere influence peddling.Story continues below advertisementOne of the more brazen exploits involved the hiring of three former U.S. intelligence and military officials to help the UAE surveil dissidents, politicians, journalists and U.S. companies. In public legal filings, U.S. prosecutors said the men helped the UAE break into computers in the United States and other countries. Last year, all three admitted in court to providing sophisticated hacking technology to the UAE, agreeing to surrender their security clearances and pay about $1.7 million to resolve criminal charges. The Justice Department touted the settlement as a “first-of-its-kind resolution.”
  • The UAE’s armed forces have fought alongside U.S. troops in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. The country also hosts 5,000 U.S. military personnel at al-Dhafra Air Base and U.S. warships at the Jebel Ali deep-water port.
  • There are no elections or political parties in the UAE, and no independent judiciary. Criticism of the government is banned, and trade unions and homosexuality are outlawed. Freedom House ranks the gulf state among the least free countries in the world.
  • U.S. officials and independent watchdogs have warned that smuggling and money-laundering in the UAE have allowed criminals and militants to hide their wealth there
  • Though the UAE has maintained strong bipartisan support in the United States, it cultivated a particularly close connection to the Trump administration, which approved the $23 billion sale of F-35s, MQ-9s and other munitions to the gulf state. The transfer, which has faced resistance by congressional Democrats, has not moved forward yet but is supported by the Biden administration.
Ed Webb

World's first public database on fossil fuels launched | Fossil Fuels News | Al Jazeera - 0 views

www.aljazeera.com/...abase-on-fossil-fuels-launched

emissions climate oil energy data resources fossil_fuels

shared by Ed Webb on 25 Sep 22 - Cached
  • “We’re not kidding ourselves that the registry will overnight result in sort of a massive governance regime on fossil fuels,” she said. “But it sheds a light on where fossil fuel production is happening to investors and other actors to hold their governments to account.”
Ed Webb

Palestinian schools in Jerusalem strike over Israel-imposed books | Israel-Palestine co... - 0 views

www.aljazeera.com/...ike-over-israeli-imposed-books

Jerusalem Palestine Israel israelpalestine education textbooks politics protest strike

shared by Ed Webb on 25 Sep 22 - No Cached
  • Palestinian schools in occupied East Jerusalem are observing a general strike in protest at attempts by Israel’s Jerusalem municipality to censor and edit Palestinian textbooks, as well as introduce an Israeli curriculum in classrooms.
  • “What is worrying the parents is that they are being cornered between distorted Palestinian curriculums and Israeli curriculums,”
  • “There is an Israelisation of Palestinian education going on,”
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • “Now, they are adding their own content like ‘Yossi is Mohammad’s neighbour’, about settlements, about co-existence,” said al-Shamali. “They have played with textbooks for Arabic, religion, history and any national references”.
  • In July, Israeli authorities revoked the permanent licenses of six Palestinian schools in Jerusalem, claiming that their textbooks incited against the Israeli state and army. They were given permission to operate for a year if the curriculum was edited. The eastern half of Jerusalem was militarily occupied by Israel in 1967 and illegally annexed. Some 350,000 Palestinians currently live in occupied East Jerusalem, with 220,000 Israeli living in illegal settlements among them.
  • The annexation of East Jerusalem is not recognised by any country in the world, apart from the United States, as it violates international law that outlines that an occupying power does not have sovereignty in the territory it occupies.
  • In 2009, the Jerusalem municipality adopted a master plan intended “to guide and outline the city’s development in the next decades”. The vision, as stated in the plan, is to create a Jewish demographic majority, with Israeli Jews making up 70 percent of the city, and Palestinians only making up 30 percent. This was later amended to a 60:40 ratio.
Ed Webb

Ahead of COP27, Egypt is highly vulnerable to climate change - 0 views

qz.com/-for-climate-change-1849657612

Egypt water agriculture food land climate COP sustainability SDGs

shared by Ed Webb on 27 Oct 22 - Cached
  • Adel Abdullah cultivates a subsistence living off of six acres of peppers, eggplants, cucumbers, tomatoes, wheat, corn, and pomegranates. He is one of millions of smallholder farmers working in the Delta. He walks barefoot in his farm as a show of reverence to the land. The soil is pale and thin, almost as sandy as the beach, and choked by mounting concentrations of salt, left behind by periodic coastal flooding and pushed into underground aquifers by the rising sea.“This is the first place to be affected by climate change,” Abdullah says. “The barriers help a bit with flooding, but the salty soil is still really killing us.”
  • he takes irrigation water from the nearby Kitchener Drain, one of the largest and most polluted canals in Egypt that aggregates wastewater from the farms, businesses, and households of an estimated 11 million people in the Delta. By the time water reaches Abdullah’s farm, it may have been reused half a dozen times since entering Egypt in the Nile, each time accumulating more salts and pollutants and losing beneficial nutrients.
  • Abdullah is forced to douse the farm in fertilizers, pesticides, and salt-suppressing chemicals, all of which further degrade the soil. Those inputs, on top of the rising costs of irrigation systems and machinery, eat up any potential income Abdullah might earn
  • ...27 more annotations...
  • The Nile Delta—where agriculture employs one-fifth of the country’s workforce and is responsible for 12% of its GDP and much of its food supply—is being hammered by rising sea levels, rising temperatures, and a growing shortage of water.
  • rapid urbanization and population growth
  • Climate adaptation solutions that could keep environmental problems from turning existential—fixing the battered and wasteful irrigation network, expanding affordable access to improved seeds and climate-smart farming technologies, and more effective and equitable regulation of urban development on agricultural land—are being rolled out by the government and research groups, but often slower than the pace of climate impacts. That’s left Egypt’s economy and food security exposed to growing risk.
  • “We’re really squeezed and marginalized here, and the government isn’t helping,” said one farmer down the road from Abdullah, who requested anonymity to speak frankly (with tens of thousands of political prisoners, Egypt’s restrictions on free speech are also gaining prominence ahead of COP27).
  • his children see no future in agriculture
  • Around 1805, an Ottoman general named Muhammad Ali took control of the country, and founded the dynasty of kings that would rule—eventually under British colonial supervision—for 150 years. One of Ali’s most enduring marks on the country was the establishment of the first modern network of dams and irrigation canals in the Delta, which allowed tens of thousands of new acres to come under cultivation.
  • water and land played a crucial role in Nasser’s legacy. 12% of the country’s arable land was owned by the aristocracy; Nasser nationalized this land and distributed it to about 340,000 impoverished rural families. He also further extended Ali’s irrigation network and oversaw construction of the Aswan High Dam, which brought an end to the Nile’s ancient seasonal flooding and fixed the river in its present position, with just two remaining branches forking through the Delta.
  • Egypt’s population has since more than quadrupled, to 104 million. Yet the flow of the Nile, which supplies more than 95% of the country’s water, has remained more or less constant. In the 1990s water availability fell below the international “water poverty” benchmark of 1,000 cubic meters per person per year.
  • Egypt has managed that scarcity by meticulously recycling agricultural water and, in recent years, curtailing the production of water-intensive crops like cotton and rice and importing 40% of its wheat and other food staples.
  • The population is still growing quickly, and could reach 160 million by 2050. The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam that is nearing completion upstream could cut the flow of Nile water into Egypt by a quarter during the as-yet-unknown number of years it will take to fill its reservoir. By 2100, climate change-related heat waves upstream could reduce the Nile’s flow by 75%, Abousabaa said.
  • rising temperatures and falling rainfall mean crops—which consume 86% of Egypt’s water supply—will require more irrigation to survive.
  • current annual demand for water is about 35% higher than what the country receives from the Nile, groundwater, and a very small amount of rain—a deficit of about 20 billion cubic meters. To cover it, she said, Egypt will need to use every drop multiple times, aggressively minimize wastage, and boost the supply by investing $2.8 billion in dozens of new desalination plants with the aim to produce 5 billion cubic meters annually by 2050.
  • On the western fringe of the Delta, farms and suburbs are gradually overtaking the desert as the central Delta grows more crowded. Here, water is even scarcer and the impacts of climate change are more pronounced. But in this and a few other desert areas around Egypt, the government is working to link more than 1.5 million acres to groundwater irrigation, and says it is about one-third of the way there. Land reclamation could take some pressure off the Delta, and sandy soils are well-suited for the production of citrus fruits that are one of Egypt’s most lucrative exports.
  • The unpredictability makes it difficult to identify solutions, Salah says: “Climate change is like a big black box.”
  • “For the last two years, with heat wave after heat wave, we lost more than half the crop. It’s really sad.”
  • The farm relies on groundwater brought up from wells on the property, and Nasrallah says the suburbs are draining the aquifer. In the last four years he has had to dig an extra thirty meters to find water—and deeper wells mean higher electricity bills for pumping. Some wells have dried up altogether. Recently, government officials told him he had to stop watering the grass on a soccer field he built for his workers.
  • Urbanization is also spreading in the inner Delta, as many farmers decide that constructing housing is more profitable than growing crops. Since the 1970s, about 14% of the Delta’s arable land has been converted to urban development
  • Individual farms are also becoming smaller with each generation as, in keeping with longstanding Egyptian custom, land is divided among a father’s heirs (with sons traditionally taking a larger share than daughters). Urban development degrades the Delta’s soil and drives more farming into the desert, leaving the entire food system more vulnerable to climate impacts. Land fragmentation leads to the inefficient use of water and other resources and raises the costs of distribution for farmers.
  • in some cases, the government’s own plans are responsible, most recently in August when thousands of people living on a Nile island near Cairo that was primarily used for farming were evicted to make way for a state-sanctioned development project.
  • The network started by Muhammed Ali now includes about 33,000 miles of delivery and drainage canals across the country, enough to wrap around the globe, that range in size from small rivers to something a child could hop over. Delta residents say they used to bathe in these canals, drink from them, and raise fish in them. Now many of them, especially at the ends of the network, are polluted with farming chemicals and sewage, and choked with trash.
  • Between seepage, evaporation, and water wasted by farmers who flood their fields instead of using controlled irrigation hoses, nearly one-third of the country’s water is lost in the irrigation system between the Aswan High Dam and the sea
  • The soil is dark and appears rich, but is crusted with a visible layer of salt, a problem that affects up to 40% of Egypt’s arable soil.
  • Fixing the irrigation network is a priority for the government. Eman Sayed from the Irrigation Ministry said her agency has lined about 3,700 miles of canals with concrete in the last two years and is aiming to finish another 12,400 in the next few years. The ministry is also helping farmers cover the cost of installing drip irrigation systems, which researchers at AUC found can cut farmers’ water consumption 61% per year; today such systems cover only one-sixth of arable land in Egypt.
  • Authorities have also begun to restrict production of water-intensive crops like rice and bananas, although farmers say there is little enforcement of these rules, and both crops are still widely cultivated throughout the Delta.
  • Egypt has made clear that COP27 will focus primarily on wringing climate finance out of the rich countries that are most responsible for climate change.
  • On the horizon, an offshore natural gas platform is visible. Egypt, which seized the disruption of Russian energy supplies to Europe because of the Ukraine war as an opening to boost its own exports of natural gas, is now contributing more to the problem than ever before; an independent review of its new climate strategy ranked it “highly insufficient” for averting disastrous levels of carbon emissions.
  • By 2100, Noureldeen says, sea level rise could inundate nearly 700 square miles of the coastal Delta and displace four million people.
Ed Webb

Millions at risk of climate displacement in Middle East - Al-Monitor: Independent, trus... - 0 views

www.al-monitor.com/...imate-displacement-middle-east

shared by Ed Webb on 30 Oct 22 - Cached
  • According to the UN refugee agency (UNHCR), "roughly 90 percent of refugees come from countries that are the most vulnerable and least ready to adapt to the impacts of climate change".
  • By 2060, Egypt's already stretched agricultural sector could shrink by as much as 47 percent, researchers predict.
  • Globally, the World Bank estimates that by 2050, if nothing is done to prevent it, there will be 216 million people internally displaced by climate change, including 19.3 million in North Africa.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Some seven percent of people in North Africa -- where densely populated coastlines are among the world's most threatened by rising waters -- live less than five metres (16 feet) above sea level, according to the European Institute of the Mediterranean (IEMed).
  • Climate-induced urban migration can "increase the pressure on natural resources", according to economist Assem Abu Hatab, "thus leading to social tensions and violent conflict" in a region where agriculture currently accounts for 22 percent of employment.
Ed Webb

Climate migration in Iraq's south brings cities to crisis - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...q-climate-crisis-drought-basra

Iraq water energy urbanization urban migration economy unemployment politics climate

shared by Ed Webb on 10 Sep 22 - No Cached
  • Iraq as the fifth-most-vulnerable country to climate change. Temperatures have increased by 1.8 degrees Celsius (3.2 degrees Fahrenheit) in three decades, according to Berkeley Earth, well above the global average, and in the summers, the mercury now regularly hits 50 Celsius (122 Fahrenheit)
  • burning crops and desiccating marshes
  • As upstream dams in Turkey and Iran weaken the flows of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, a salty tide is creeping north from the Persian Gulf, poisoning the land
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • changing climate is forcing families to sell off their livestock and pack up for urban centers such as the region’s largest city, Basra, in search of jobs and better services
  • As hotter, more-crowded cities become the future of a warming world, a lack of preparedness will only exacerbate the discontent already fraying the social fabric
  • decades of U.S.-backed sanctions and war, combined with the weight of corruption and neglect, have left Basra’s infrastructure unable to adequately support the 2 million people the city already houses — let alone the rising tide of newcomers.
  • According to official figures, Basra province has a population of over 3 million — an increase of at least 20 percent in 10 years. And most of that growth has been in its urban areas
  • nearly 40 percent of farmers across the country reported an almost total loss of their wheat crop.
  • Social media has been awash with photos showing water buffaloes lying dead on the cracked mudflats of southern Iraq’s dried-out marshlands
  • 12 percent of residents were newcomers who had settled in Basra over the past decade, mostly because of water scarcity and a lack of economic opportunities. The number is even higher in other southern Iraqi cities, such as Shatrah and Amarah.
  • water degradation in the province cost Iraq $400 million in lost animals, palm trees and crops in 2018 alone
  • As he saw it, migration was only making the situation worse, and he felt that the slow tide of arrivals was changing his city. “Their mind-set is different; we don’t know how to deal with them,” he said. “They don’t respect the laws here.”
  • Decades of government neglect in rural areas, particularly in the education sector, have left many of the migrants illiterate.
  • often struggle to access the city’s formal labor market and instead rely on temporary employment as construction workers or truck drivers, or hawking goods from carts in the street. And their habits and attitudes clash with those of their urban cousins.
  • political leaders in southern Iraq have started blaming the city’s crime rate — as well as other problems — on its migrants.
  • A few years ago, huge demonstrations decrying corruption and unemployment were crushed with deadly force. Since then, every summer has brought scattered daily protests over authorities’ failure to provide basic services.
  • “This is how you drive these people into criminality, by discriminating,” she said. “They move to irregular neighborhoods where there’s no proper public services and no employment. And then social issues will emerge.”
  • When a heat wave forced the shutdown of Basra’s power grid in August, the homes of newcomers and longtime residents alike were plunged into darkness as millions spent sleepless nights drenched in sweat
  • “My dreams in this country are being lived by a dog in Europe,”
Ed Webb

Leaking Ghost Tankers: Pollution in the Port of Aden - Peace Organization PAX - 0 views

paxforpeace.nl/...-pollution-in-the-port-of-aden

Yemen maritime RedSea environment pollution shipping war anaylsis OSINT

shared by Ed Webb on 04 Aug 22 - Cached
  • Decaying oil tankers at the coasts of Yemen pose serious risks to the environment and the people depending on it, reminding us starkly how conflicts can bring serious pollution risks. New open source research by PAX reveals multiple oil spills from rusty ships that have been polluting the coastal areas around the Port of Aden. If no action is taken by the authorities to remove these ships, it is only a matter of time before a new disaster will unfold.
  • Current international attention is mainly focused on finding a solution for the decaying oil tanker FSO SAFER loaded with 1.1 million barrels of oil. The tanker is at risk of sinking or exploding, which would create a regional environmental catastrophe. Yet over the course of the last years, smaller incidents around oil tankers in Yemen’s ports, the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden have been mounting as well. Ranging from direct attacks on oil tankers to abandoned ships sinking and fires at port refineries, the conflict continues to create serious local pollution problems.
  • The war itself already poses serious environmental challenges that impact both Yemen’s population and its precious ecosystems. This ranges from structural leaking oil incidents documented by the Yemen environmentalist group Holmakhdar and the Sanaa Center, to broader environmental problems, and conflict-linked cutting and dying of millions of date palms, demonstrated by the open-source investigative group Bellingcat. The current weak state of governance and oversight around the many environmental challenges Yemen is facing continues to result in ongoing incidents that worsen the state of environment and affect the people depending on it.  Not only does this currently already lead to mounting environmental health risks and degraded ecosystems, these impacts will also worsen climate resilience for the conflict-affected country due to more extreme weather events, water shortages and rising temperatures
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • According to the experts, over 40 tons of oil was leaked from the leaking tanker, though this has not been confirmed by the local authorities
  • PAX has observed leaks from two ships, including a large spill on July 5,2022 from the PEARL OF ATHENA that continued for 18 days until July 23. Oil slicks have washed ashore, polluting the coastal environment, and could pose a long-term risk to the marine environment in and around the bay of Aden, which could pose particular threats to the livelihoods of fishing communities. Hydrocarbons from crude oil and refined products contain toxic heavy metals such as lead, zinc, cadmium and mercury that can accumulate around coastal soils and sediments, be ingested by marine organisms such as fish, affect marine birds and mammals and impact marine ecosystems.
  • Large spills such as this one are also likely to hold up the arrival of ships that need to offload humanitarian goods in the container terminal. This is because ships are not able to go into the port until such slicks are removed to prevent further dispersal of the oil by the movement of incoming ships.  
  • The ongoing war in Yemen continues to stress local authorities’ capacities to address both the issues with dilapidated oil tankers and set up a proper environmental monitoring and enforcement mechanism for ships arriving in the Port of Aden
  • A damage assessment conducted by the UN Development Programme (UNDP) in 2021 found that at over 20 million USD was needed for reparations at the container terminal alone. The report, also stated that:  “Health, safety, and environmental awareness in the Port is currently unacceptable. The Port contains large areas of conflict-damaged debris, damaged and unusable equipment, and equipment and materials being stored for future use.”  
  • The arrival of ballast water on ships trading to ports in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden (..) has the potential to do more harm to the marine environment than a major oil pollution incident. (..) Dumping of hazardous materials at sea in waters close to the Gulf of Aden has the potential to carry serious pollution hazards into the region.”   
  • the international community has failed to pick up the bill to effectively prevent a major environmental disaster with the FSO SAFER, despite the UN starting a public campaign to raise $20 million dollar to prevent a serious disaster posed by the tanker. Meanwhile, western countries continue to allow for billions in weapons sales to the countries bombing Yemen.  
  • The remaining tankers in the Port of Aden continue to pose a risk of sinking, which would likely lead to further environmental pollution with effects on coastal areas. This would particularly impact fishing communities and surrounding ecosystems
Ed Webb

Qatar World Cup set to be major windfall for tourist-ready Dubai | Middle East Eye - 0 views

www.middleeasteye.net/...-cup-looms-money-spinner-dubai

Qatar UAE football soccer worldcup sport sports tourism economy

shared by Ed Webb on 17 Sep 22 - No Cached
  • With little investment the UAE, and in particular Dubai, stands to gain if, as expected, supporters opt to stay in the tourism hotspot instead of tiny Gulf neighbour Qatar during the November-December tournament.
  • Dubai's more permissive environment - including a wider availability of alcohol - could entice fans
  • Budget airline flydubai will run at least 30 return flights a day to Doha, just an hour away, part of a daily airlift of 160 shuttle services from cities in the resource-rich Gulf.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Any economic windfall, and reflected glory from the first World Cup on Arab soil, will come less than two years after Doha and the UAE were at odds over a regional blockade that isolated Qatar from its neighbours.
  • The UAE is also offering multiple-entry visas at the nominal fee of 100 dirhams ($27) to people with tickets for World Cup matches.
  • One Dubai hotel, on the man-made, frond-shaped Palm island, will be given over entirely to football fans.
  • Shuttle flights will also run from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Oman to relieve pressure on accommodation in Doha, a city of 2.4 million. But "relative to other Gulf states, Dubai does hold an advantage with its standing as a major tourist destination already",
Ed Webb

The Post-WWI Migrations That Built Yugoslavia and Turkey Have Left a Painful Legacy - N... - 0 views

newlinesmag.com/...key-have-left-a-painful-legacy

Turkey Balkans Greece Yugoslavia Bulgaria Albania history migration nationalism Kosovo Serbia Romania minorities

shared by Ed Webb on 15 Dec 23 - Cached
  • the religious, ethnic and linguistic diversity that characterized their territories in the Middle East and Eastern Europe no longer chimed with the new world order being organized around nation-states
  • Designing measures such as the Greek-Turkish population exchange of 1923, the League of Nations legitimized demographic engineering policies and made migration an intrinsic part of nation-building. With international encouragement, the states with Muslim minorities in the Balkans devised multipronged policies to push out the citizens they saw as undesirable. Turkey became the only destination for Balkan Muslims, even when they were not Turkish.
  • in 1938 Belgrade and Ankara concluded a little-known agreement to transfer 200,000 Yugoslav citizens to Turkey. The transfer did not materialize because of the start of World War II, but the migrations did eventually take place and continued into the 1950s. For both Yugoslavia and Turkey, new states created in the aftermath of World War I, migration was an important part of nation-building.
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • took as its model another such deal between Turkey and Romania in 1936 as well as the better-known Greek-Turkish population exchange of 1923
  • Forced processes of homogenization are still part of the repertoire of nation-state building, and continue to shape our understanding of world order. Muslim presence in the southeastern periphery of Europe likewise continues to be viewed as problematic and even dangerous: As Piro Rexhepi observed in the book “White Enclosures,” their integration continues to be desirable for security but impossible racially.
  • Focus on religious identity allowed for a formal incorporation of these rather diverse populations into the Turkish national body. The asylum policy and the settlement laws defined migrants as Turks and those “affiliated with Turkish culture” to encompass all the Slav, Albanian and Greek Muslims, making Turkey­­ a safe haven for Muslim minorities fleeing oppressive regimes.
  • Dispossession, expulsions and massacres of diverse Muslim populations were already a grim reality of nation-building in southeastern Europe in the 19th century, when Greece, Montenegro, Serbia, Romania and Bulgaria were carved out of Ottoman provinces. In fact, the conquests of Ottoman Europe after 1699 normalized expulsion and compulsory conversion of local Muslims in the lost territories
  • During the Balkan Wars (1912-1913) Serbia, Montenegro, Greece and Bulgaria invaded the remaining Ottoman territories in Europe. Within several months, an estimated 1 million Muslims vanished, murdered and expelled from the regions taken over by these states. The shocking magnitude of the violence, which continued into World War I, made many Muslims wary of their future in the new nation-states and incited migration to the Ottoman Empire, itself in the midst of conflict.
  • 19th-century definitions of South Slavic brotherhood envisioned Slav Muslims as potentially assimilable, distinguishing between “the Turks” as the non-Slavic Ottomans and “our Turks,” that is, Slav Muslims
  • so-called reform also included the vast properties of the Islamic pious endowments. Schools, mosques and Sufi lodges lost the land and incomes that were used to operate educational, religious and community services. Some land appropriations were symbolic: The 15th-century Burmali Mosque that visually defined Skopje’s main thoroughfare was simply torn down
  • In the 1920s, Catholic missionaries working in neighboring Kosovo, a former Ottoman province inhabited by Albanian Muslim and Christian populations and similarly incorporated into Southern Serbia, sent reports of massacres, assassinations, imprisonment and forced labor in a memorandum to the League of Nations, receiving no response.
  • Ivo Andric, an admired novelist and Yugoslav Nobel laureate, was also one of the highest-ranking Yugoslav diplomats in the interwar period. Eager to finalize the population transfer agreement with Turkey, he advised the government in Belgrade that Turkey was not only interested in the small group of ethnic Turks in Yugoslavia but also populations akin to Turks in their “mentality.” Repeating a constant theme in almost all of Andric’s novels, Muslims were described in his diplomatic correspondence as alien to the Balkans. For Andric, they were “Turks leftover in the territories of our Kingdom.”
  • over 2,000 Bosnians were settled along with Greek Muslims in the town of Izmir.
  • Turkish officials, faced with the constant influx of migrants, pursued agreements with the Balkan states that would offset the costs of migrant settlement. The 1934 Balkan Pact included minority clauses that allowed Turkish citizens to sell their properties in their former homelands. Turkish administrators also considered requesting an estimated payment from the Balkan nation-states to match the value of the properties that Balkan Muslims were forced to leave behind.
  • The Turkish Republic saw population growth as beneficial for economic development and national defense in the long term, as it worked to populate its eastern and western borderlands. Moreover, many of Turkey’s early administrators, as migrants and children of migrants themselves, understood these new waves of migration from a personal perspective.
  • Laws barred those speaking languages other than Turkish from settling in groups and limited the “foreign” presence to no more than 10% of a municipality, though the realities of the period frequently made these laws impossible to execute. The locals took on much of the burden of helping newcomers, begrudgingly sharing public resources. At the same time, the immigrants provided necessary manpower and introduced new methods in agriculture and certain industries. While Balkan languages largely disappeared with the following generation, enduring legacies, such as Balkan cuisine and music evoking the most personal memories of exile, acquired a place in the Turkish national heritage.
  • Today, no official recognition of the violent policies of “unmixing” exists, and barely anyone has heard of Yugoslavia’s attempted population transfer of 1939.
  • the international community’s preferred solutions to “ethnic conflicts” in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo remain equally tied to principles of nationalist homogenization and demarcation. A century after the foundation of modern Turkey and the first Yugoslavia, the legacies of that era’s mass migration and state violence persist.
Ed Webb

How Africa will become the center of the world's urban future - Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...africa-cities

Africa demographics cities migration Kenya Nigeria CotedIvoire Sudan DRC

shared by Ed Webb on 09 Jan 22 - Cached
  • by the end of this century, Africa will be the only continent experiencing population growth. Thirteen of the world’s 20 biggest urban areas will be in Africa — up from just two today — as will more than a third of the world’s population.
  • Set to become the world’s most populous city, Lagos faces all the challenges rapid growth poses, which can be boiled down to one: planning. Can solutions outpace the weight tens of millions of new inhabitants will place on a city that is low-slung and dense, situated on polluted lagoons and rivers, and short on public services?
  • Khartoum, Sudan: Unstable states like Sudan crumble first in their hinterlands, and in those moments of crisis, cities are beacons of safety, places for people to regroup, build new identities and forge political movements — even revolutions — that aim to bring peace back to places they had to abandon.
  • ...39 more annotations...
  • Kinshasa, Congo: In a city whose geography still reflects segregationist colonial-era planning, where a handful of oligarchs lead gilded lives while the poor navigate systems broken by corruption and neglect, we get a glimpse of what it takes to break inequality’s shackles.
  • Mombasa, Kenya: The designs of foreign powers have molded African cities for centuries, especially along the continent’s coasts. From narrow-alleyed old towns to gleaming new container-shipping terminals, port cities like this one are layered with evidence of how budding empires, in the Arab world, Europe and now China, sought to remake them.
  • Abidjan, Ivory Coast: Despite fearmongering that Africa’s growing population will flood into wealthier parts of the world, cosmopolitan cities like this one draw most of Africa’s migrants and serve as models of tolerance, welcoming immigration policies and a reinvigorated Pan-African identity.
  • The traffic is a manifestation of what Lagosians fear most for their city: There is no plan. Lagos will balloon to 30 million, then 50 million, maybe even 100 million people, and meanwhile the government will keep unveiling new visions for the city that never come to fruition. Many doubt even its simplest promises, such as the impending inauguration of a single subway line that was supposed to open a decade ago.
  • Lagos emerges as the world’s most populous city at some point between now and 2100, in study after study. Changing the inputs affects only how soon and by how much.
  • A study published last year in the Lancet forecasts that Nigeria will become more populous than China by the end of the century, as birthrates rapidly shrink in some parts of the world — East Asia, eastern and southern Europe, the Caribbean — and level off in others, such as the United States, which is projected to have a similar population in 2100 as now.
  • Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Tanzania are all forecast to join Nigeria among the 10 most populous countries by 2100. North Africa and southern Africa, while continuing to grow, will do so at much lower rates than the rest of the continent.
  • “The people who govern this city are brutes, banning this and that left and right,” said Olushola, who, like countless others, pays off police officers to continue working. “We are providing a service that millions of people need 24/7. There is no alternative except to walk, and they ban us.”
  • Lawanson and other researchers cautioned against believing wholesale in projections of 80 million or even 100 million people in greater Lagos. Not because that’s infeasible, but because the city is already so strained, there’s no guarantee that people will continue to find the kind of economic opportunity that draws them here now.
  • in a city where the first and only major bridge over the lagoon was built decades ago, his assurance that not one but five more are being planned is scoffed at by many Lagosians — as are the four metro lines he says are “in the pipeline.”
  • For half a century now, displacement by catastrophe has been the main driver of growth in Khartoum. This is the biggest of a downtrodden club of African cities where people have brought their lives on donkey carts or in rickety trucks, far from hometowns abandoned because of conflict or climate change — or both.
  • “We cannot be like Dubai, which is a utopian aspiration some of our leaders have. We have to be the best Lagos we can be.”
  • “All the energy in the humanitarian world gets channeled toward emergencies, and so we don’t end up talking about what happens as a result — the big current underneath our work, which is massive urban influx,” said Bernard Lami, the IOM’s deputy head in Sudan.
  • Ivory Coast, where foreigners now account for nearly 20 percent of the country’s economy, more than anywhere else in Africa.
  • Around 40 percent of the world’s internally displaced people are in Africa
  • “There are millions of us living in these places that politicians never set foot in except to tear them down so they can make an industrial zone or new, big houses,”
  • In camps-turned-neighborhoods like Haj Yousif, long-oppressed groups from Sudan’s hinterlands discovered common histories and common cause. The city, after providing safety, became an organizing ground for groups that wanted to ensure that the safety was lasting. In Sudan, that meant first getting rid of Bashir.
  • “In the revolution, that’s partly what we were fighting against. There were big political issues, but it was also about mismanagement,” he added. “How long will it take for the needs of the people to become part of our governance? Ten, 20 years — or after we’re long gone? I guess it will always depend on us, the people, ourselves.”
  • Like many port cities, Mombasa is infused with distant cultures. From its centuries-old core, its expansion has been spurred by sultanates, seafaring mercantilists and great world powers, which all saw economic opportunity in its protected inlets.
  • The shifting dynamics have been a source of concern in Western capitals, which have seen their cachet on the continent decline. And the changes have spawned warnings from those same capitals to African governments that they are being tricked into debt traps that leave strategic resources and infrastructure vulnerable to Chinese takeover.That view has been increasingly discounted by scholars, in part because Chinese lenders have not requisitioned any major infrastructure projects even as debts continue to mount. Chinese loans to Africa also have declined after a high in 2013, the year China launched its ambitious Belt and Road Initiative to link its markets with the rest of the world.
  • loans laden with confidentiality clauses
  • Opaque loans and closer ties with Beijing have strengthened African governments that have little regard for democracy, human rights or economic equality
  • “We have deep water, we’re on the equator, we’re on the way from everywhere to everywhere else,” said Kalandar Khan, a historian of Kenya’s coast whose ancestors were brought from Baluchistan, in what is now Pakistan, to Mombasa four centuries ago by Omani sultans who employed them as mercenaries.
  • Mombasa, Kenya’s second-biggest city, is expected to grow rapidly as it accelerates its shift from being an outdated spice-route waypoint to a major global city that funnels goods to all of East Africa, a region with one of the world’s fastest-growing populations.
  • The United States in particular has sought to counter China’s ascent in Africa with questions about respect for human rights and the environment in Chinese-linked projects. The approach has not prevented any of those projects from pushing forward.
  • Responding to skepticism about Chinese intentions, many Africans simply ask: What is the problem with getting help to attain the same level of development others have? And who are Western governments to raise questions about human rights and accountability in Africa when their own record is atrocious?
  • she, like the majority of African migrants, did something many in the West might not expect, especially after a decade of fearmongering by populist politicians and a relentless focus in the media on the most desperate, perilous voyages in search of asylum.Gadji immigrated, legally, to another African country.
  • The majority of African migrants, both rich and poor, do not cross oceans, but rather land borders within Africa.Ninety-four percent of African migration across oceans takes a regular, legal form.At least 80 percent of Africans contemplating migration say they have no interest in leaving the continent.
  • Without new infrastructure to keep up with the growth, it now takes longer to cross Lagos from one edge to the other in a danfo than it does to fly to Lagos from Europe.
  • Like New York or Paris, Ivory Coast’s biggest city, Abidjan, is a cosmopolitan patchwork of neighborhoods where flavors, languages and histories overlap. As Africa’s population grows, Abidjan, Nairobi, Johannesburg and other cities across the continent that brim with opportunity will reap the dividends of that growth, especially if Western countries continue to suppress African migration flows off the continent.
  • In modern West Africa, home to 17 countries, locals often see borders as a hindrance — or even a fallacy — more useful to the Europeans who created them than the Africans who have to navigate them.
  • Despite relatively low historical levels of African migration to Europe, European Union member states have paid billions of dollars to West African governments over the past decade in return for strict enforcement of border controls aimed at preventing African migrants from reaching European shores.
  • “There are levels of irony here. Europe has integrated into a union, and yet they pay us to isolate ourselves,” said Issiaka Konate, a senior official in Ivory Coast’s ministry that promotes regional integration. “By doing so, they create an opportunity for criminal networks to operate in human trafficking, which has led to a profusion of armed groups and instability. Migration is not the political lightning rod in West Africa that it is in Europe. We welcome it.”
  • For most of its post-independence period, Ivory Coast has sought to lure migrants with relatively high wages, especially in its cocoa industry, the world’s largest. That alone has drawn millions from Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and others, and propelled Ivory Coast forward as the region’s best-performing economy.
  • Nearby countries such as Niger, which has the world’s highest birthrate and lowest standard of living, are replete with reasons to leave
  • The food stall’s owner said that in just five years, 15 young men like Amadou had come and gone, earning enough to go back home comfortably.“Garba makes us popular here. It is cheap, it is fast, it is tasty. People appreciate us,” Amadou said, explaining why he’d chosen Abidjan over Europe.“Europe is unimaginable to me. Very few people dream of Europe, frankly — and they are people you could say who dream too much.”
  • Europe has restricted the flow to exceptionally strong-willed migrants for whom the lure of Europe is hard to shake.
  • To an older generation of migrants, the fixation on Europe and the insistence that it’s the only place to make enough money to live the good life is a sinister myth driven by a few success stories.
  • “In my youth, there was no word ‘immigration’ — saying a fellow African is a foreigner is itself a foreign concept,” he said. “Well, it is an infectious concept and a political tool — the blame game, the creation of difference, those classic divide-and-rule mentalities of the West, are they not? It is a miseducation foisted upon us.”
Ed Webb

A New Operation in Syria? - Carnegie Middle East Center - Carnegie Endowment for Intern... - 0 views

carnegie-mec.org/87248

USA US Syria Russia Turkey NATO Kurds refugees military Ukraine analysis

shared by Ed Webb on 09 Jun 22 - Cached
  • Ankara controls large swathes of territory in northern Syria, but its previous attempts at establishing a continuous 30-kilometer-deep safety zone along the entirety of the Turkish-Syrian border have so far failed. Turkish troops and their affiliates still do not control a stretch of around 70 kilometers east and west of the city of Kobani, as well as a larger portion of territory around the city of Qamishli, all the way to the Tigris River in the east
  • Ankara may be calculating that Russia, otherwise busy with the protracted invasion of Ukraine, may not have the time and resources to prevent a new Turkish incursion, nor the political legitimacy to object to it given its own operations in Donbas
  • With Erdoğan facing dramatically unfavorable preelection polls and a dire economic situation, including sky-rocketing inflation and declining levels of foreign investment, his temptation to rally voters around the flag and silence criticism from the opposition coalition on a subject of national interest is obvious
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • always eager to present itself as a power independent from Russia and the West
  • if the operation proves to be successful and sustainable, it would reinforce Ankara’s plan to “voluntarily repatriate” Syrian refugees from Turkey
  • The United States maintain a small contingent of 900 troops in northeastern Syria, mainly to prevent a resurgence of the Islamic State. Washington’s cooperation with the YPG in this region has been one of the thorniest issues in bilateral relations between Turkey and the United States. A new Turkish operation would probably clash with U.S. interests on the ground, further aggravating the diplomatic spat between Turkey and its Western allies over the sale of U.S. warplanes, relations with Russia, and NATO enlargement.
  • a majority of Syrian refugees currently in Turkey are Sunni Arabs, so by relocating them to northern Syria Turkey would achieve the strategic objective of diluting the Kurdish populations living there
  • other Syrian areas already under Turkey’s control show signs of a lasting presence. Local administrative and security structures are appointed by Turkey, public services such as health and post offices are run by Turkey, and the de facto currency is the Turkish lira
Ed Webb

A New Path For Syria's Kurds - War on the Rocks - 0 views

warontherocks.com/...a-new-path-for-syrias-kurds

Syria military US USA analysis opinion politics diplomacy Turkey Kurds SDF

shared by Ed Webb on 13 Mar 23 - Cached
  • in a dramatic reversal in its foreign policy, Ankara is now looking to normalize relations with Damascus
  • Ankara has long supported the opposition and anti-regime forces in Syria and controls a huge chunk of Syrian territory in the north. For the United States and European powers, Turkish-Syrian normalization would represent a dramatic shift, fundamentally altering the strategic calculus in Syria and directly threatening the position of U.S.-backed Syrian Kurds — given that both Ankara and Damascus want to see their territorial control and autonomous governing curtailed or brought under the auspices of a centralized Syrian government. 
  • The right approach is not arming Kurds or offering them the false promise of U.S. military backing to counter a Syrian-Turkish front but supporting them politically to secure a modus vivendi with the governments in Ankara and Damascus. To survive, Kurds need to reach an agreement with both. This will necessitate supporting the Kurds in their political dialogue with Damascus and pushing the Kurdistan Workers’ Party — the U.S.- and Turkish-designated terrorist group — to declare a ceasefire inside Turkey ahead of the June 2023 elections, easing the pressure on Syrian Kurds. This could open up the possibility of a political softening on the Turkish-Kurdish front, remove a major irritant in the U.S.-Turkish relationship, and preserve some Western influence inside Syria. 
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • the Turkish president has formed an alliance with ultra-nationalists to secure his power — and the continuation of the war against the Kurdistan Worker’s Party and its Syrian offshoot, the Syrian Democratic Forces, has served as a lubricant in this partnership
  • Erdogan is no doubt calculating that an agreement with Damascus would secure a greenlight from Russia to launch a new incursion or coordinated action with Damascus against the Kurds ahead of the June 2023 elections, helping rally Turkish voters around the flag
  • a rapprochement with Syria helps Turkey manage its relationship with Moscow at a time when Erdogan needs Russia’s consent for action in Syria and money to help prop up the country’s collapsing economy. Turkey and Russia have a complicated relationship which simultaneously involves competition and cooperation, often at the expense of Western influence in Syria, Libya, and the Caucasus
  • the fragile peace in the northeast, where an estimated 900 U.S. troops are stationed alongside the Syrian Democratic Forces
  • Syria has also become an arena of great power projection for Russia and a site of proxy warfare within the broader great power rivalry with the United States. Putin might eventually choose to greenlight a limited Turkish incursion or coordinate a joint Turkish-Syrian pincer movement against the Kurds, knowing that this could keep Ankara happy ahead of the elections and would create a crisis inside NATO. He also knows that Turkish-Syrian normalization would put immense pressure on the residual U.S. position in Syria.
  • With the Assad regime, the Kurds should be aiming for an agreement that guarantees more autonomy than Damascus is currently willing to give but recognize they will have to accept less than what they want
  • Russia and the regime lack the resources to rebuild Syria and restore legitimacy to its government
  • There is already speculation that the ruling Justice and Development Party is looking for ways to secure conservative Kurdish electoral support or to peel Kurds away from the opposition block
  • A precipitous withdrawal would create a public humiliation like Afghanistan and a free-for-all which would likely leave the Kurds devastated and the region raked by new instability — which, in turn, could well be exploited by ISIL in a manner that eventually pulls the United States back to Syria for a counter-terrorism campaign
Ed Webb

The Changing Strategic Importance of the Middle East and North Africa - 0 views

www.csis.org/...middle-east-and-north-africa-0

MENA geopolitics energy trade analysis military strategy

shared by Ed Webb on 13 Mar 23 - Cached
  • an overview of the key factors shaping the region’s changing strategic importance. It then focuses on the oil and gas exports, which are the key factor shaping the region’s strategic importance, its role as a group of major trading partners, its role as a key line of global communication between regions, and its role in global migration
  • provides a country-by-country overview of the key quantitative and trend data on oil and gas exports. It shows that there is only a limited consensus between various sources and just how different the resources and exports of given countries are.
  • several key issues affecting the future of the region’s exports of fossil fuels in detail, with supporting graphs, maps, and charts. These issues include major changes in the patterns of future energy demand and the potential impact of global warming, the changing expert needs of developed and developing states, the impact of the war in Ukraine on energy demand, the impact of strategic competition with Russia and China on energy security, and the real level of U.S. dependence on the stable flow of oil and gas exports from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • The second volume is entitled The Impact of Growing Military and Civil Instability in the MENA Region. It addresses the data and trends in regional security and military developments and the problems in governance, economic, population pressure, and other key causes of civil instability. It is available on the CSIS website at https://www.csis.org/analysis/changing-strategic-importance-middle-east-and-north-africa. 
Ed Webb

Can debt relief save the Red Sea's coral reefs? - 0 views

www.newarab.com/...lief-save-red-seas-coral-reefs

COP Egypt Tunisia Jordan environment climate debt analysis opinion Belize

shared by Ed Webb on 20 Dec 22 - Cached
  • despite contributing little to greenhouse gas emissions, debt-laden developing countries appear likely to suffer the costliest effects of global warming.
  • A landmark deal in Belize may provide a path for the Arab world’s poorest countries to tackle these vexing challenges in tandem, combining debt relief with climate change mitigation. The Nature Conservancy, an environmental organisation with global reach, helped Belize obtain over $350 million to service its government debt in exchange for the Central American country dedicating more resources to environmental protection and marine conservation.
  • Beyond the significance of a developing country receiving debt relief for toughening environmental policies, Belize oversees a series of coral reefs whose preservation the Nature Conservancy coded into the historic agreement. Arab countries such as COP27 host Egypt likewise have a number of coral reefs, among them species that have demonstrated impressive resilience against global warming.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • saving Egypt’s coral reefs will require greater action, likely from world powers
  • A 2019 study found that climate change could cost Egypt as much as 95 percent of its revenue from tourism to the coral reefs, so world powers will likely have to come up with millions or even billions of dollars more. Egypt hardly finds itself alone. In the first half of 2022, the government debt of Jordan—home to its own prized set of coral reefs in the Gulf of Aqaba—reached $41 billion, 88.4 percent of the kingdom’s gross domestic product. Meanwhile, in Tunisia, coral reefs near the resort destination of Tabarka appear set to suffer as climate change batters the country and the Tunisian economy falters, depriving authorities of the funds necessary to fund marine conservation.
  • pairing debt relief with marine conservation, as well as more general measures for environmental protection and climate change mitigation, a boon for Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia, and other coral-rich countries in the Arab world
Ed Webb

Indoor farms are energy hogs, a test for their climate credentials - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...vertical-farms-climate-energy

climate food agriculture energy US USA sustainability SDGs

shared by Ed Webb on 31 Mar 24 - No Cached
  • As the effects of climate change intensify, bringing more severe droughts, flooding and pest infestations, some growers are wresting control of their crops away from nature. Huge high-tech greenhouses and smaller vertical farms — windowless warehouses that typically grow plants stacked in trays — hold the promise of letting farmers grow almost anywhere.But all that control comes with an environmental cost. Inside these facilities, farmers are creating the perfect growing conditions with power generated mostly by burning fossil fuels, and lots of it.
  • “There’s extraordinary water efficiency in these facilities, but energy is really the Achilles’ heel.”
  • In colder climes, indoor farm operators heat their greenhouses with natural gas or propane, since these fossil fuels are often the cheapest option. Vertical farms are a smaller slice of the market, but they typically consume much more electricity than greenhouses to replace natural sunlight and to power cooling and dehumidifier systems.
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • Between 2017 and 2022, land used to grow vegetables and herbs in greenhouses increased by more than 20 million square feet, an 18 percent jump, according to the federal government’s latest agriculture census, released last month
  • In New England today, about 20 percent of the leafy greens for sale come from controlled-environment agriculture outfits
  • A study of 12 indoor farms by the nonprofit Resource Innovation Institute found that five of them used as much energy per square foot as a hospital. One vertical farm, an outlier, was guzzling as much energy per square foot as a data center.
  • These companies advertise their produce as safer, more nutritious and fresher than field-grown produce, since their operations typically skip pesticides and are within a few hours’ drive of major cities. They boast of using one-tenth of the water, a claim backed up by independent research. But they don’t often talk about their energy use; most states don’t require them to report it, and researchers said many are reluctant to share this data.
  • In Westbrook, Maine, Vertical Harvest is building a four-story, 52,000-square-foot vertical farm and is negotiating a deal to supply it with renewable energy. However, company leaders said they can’t apply the same strategy to their next project, in Detroit, where the state’s energy mix is heavy on fossil fuels and the company can’t choose its electricity provider.
  • At a time when consumers are seeking more year-round vegetables and berries, and many still have grim memories of the pandemic’s supply-chain crises, states are courting indoor farms that can be built wherever there’s a market for fresh produce.
  • Pennsylvania Agriculture Secretary Russell Redding said the state has created a “concierge service” to ease the permitting process and help indoor-farm operators with site selection. His agency is focusing on locations in the Lehigh Valley and the south-central region, where there’s proximity to major energy infrastructure and desirable markets in New York, New Jersey and D.C. Some of the state’s top universities are working on technology to speed automation inside vertical farms and greenhouses, he said, while its colleges are training workers for jobs in these facilities.One of Pennsylvania’s selling points is its abundance of energy, most of which is generated by burning natural gas.“These facilities are energy-intensive,” Redding said, “but Pennsylvania is the second-largest net energy supplier to the nation, and we think that’s a differentiator for us.”
  • Gretchen Schimelpfenig, a civil engineer who has worked to track indoor farms’ energy use, said many American greenhouses could cut their energy use in half. Dutch greenhouse technology has proved that this is possible, she said, but in the United States, there’s little pressure on indoor food growers to do things differently.
  • Little Leaf Farms, the dominant controlled-environment producer of packaged greens in New England, uses natural gas to heat its greenhouses. To get around this problem, CEO Paul Sellew said the company buys renewable-energy certificates, each of which corresponds to a set amount of energy generated by cleaner sources such as wind or solar. Little Leaf is also planning to build a large solar array on its 180-acre site in McAdoo, Pa., and Sellew said he’s keen on eventually switching to geothermal energy, which is already being used in the Netherlands to heat greenhouses but hasn’t caught on in the United States.
  • A few vertical-farm companies, like Texas’s Eden Green, have responded to the problem of dirty energy by focusing on efficiency. Eden Green’s hybrid model uses natural light, and the company lessens the burden on its cooling system by using programmed vents to control heat and humidity. Badrina estimated his two farms use about a quarter of the electricity consumed by a typical vertical farm growing leafy greens, which has allowed the company to plant other crops, such as herbs, that are more energy-intensive.
  • as some companies look to build vertical farms in the swampy Southeast, Badrina said they are likely to face even higher power bills from all the energy needed to counter the region’s heat and humidity.
« First ‹ Previous 141 - 160 of 160
Showing 20▼ items per page