MENA Environment

Saudi Arabia hopes to buy itself some time with major energy conservation efforts. Saudi Aramco is pursuing an initiative in cooperation with the Kingdom’s utilities and business sector to generate massive energy savings on as rapid a timetable as possible. This initiative includes moves into renewable power sources like solar and wind, plus efforts to slash energy waste and duplication and create a business culture sensitive to energy efficiency

Saudi Arabia currently relies on oil revenues for about 80 percent of its government spending

Plans to add renewable power would help maintain fiscal balance for another two or three years, but that’s all

Chatham House believes “huge economic, social and environmental gains from energy conservation are possible in Saudi Arabia” but it cautions that the longstanding Saudi tradition of low energy prices and the Kingdom’s sluggish bureaucracy pose “challenges” to implementing needed pricing and regulatory reforms.

Saudi Arabia is aiming to generate about 10 percent of its power needs from solar energy by the year 2020

in places where water is abundant it has no price and where it’s scarce, it’s very expensive

the U.S. hasn’t fully absorbed the importance of virtual water, but China and India, where drought and population pressures are more extreme, recognize the crucial relationship of water to GDP growth. As of last October, 80 Indian companies had spent $2.4 billion buying East African land in areas where water is abundant to grow and export water-hungry crops. China has also been actively buying land, and has reportedly considered buying rice (a pound contains 650 gallons of virtual water) from the U.S. Virtual water has created an unnoticed trade flow from water-rich countries to the water poor. In world terms, the U.S. is an enormous exporter of water

A state like Pennsylvania, with abundant water and lots of nearby natural gas will become reindustrialized as companies from around the world relocate. “The chemical industry is repatriating to the U.S. for the abundance of water and cheap energy. We’ve got enough water for 5 to 20 years.” Cheap labor in places like China is becoming a nonissue, Brennan says, while companies chase the chance to have access to resources again. What he describes—a new life for once-abandoned, resource-rich places like Bellingham, Washington—sounds like the Industrial Revolution all over again. In fact, a similar shift occurred after the 1973 energy crisis, when many manufacturers relocated from the Northeast to the South, where they could spend less on energy and (in some cases) labor.

Environmentalists’ efforts to limit the damage from extracting resources in the U.S. during the last 30 years have been enabled by globalization, which allowed U.S. consumers to buy cheaper resources abroad. But when the U.S. has some of the world’s cheapest water, how will we protect it as a natural resource?

For the “creative classes” on the coasts, the idea that parts of the U.S. economy are living on resources (rather than their wits), may seem a bit “third world,” or at least a step backwards from the service-and-brains paradigm the country has embraced over the last two decades. The paradox is that in order to get business to treat water well, we may need to put a price on water—an idea that runs counter to our American sentiment that water should be free.

on 23 April, the Israeli army destroyed two French-built Palestinian wells in the Hebron area

Israel smashed up €49-million-worth of EU-funded projects in total in the 2001 to 2011 period

Israeli-friendly member states - chiefly Italy and the Netherlands - have quashed suggestions by EU embassies in the region to impose penalties, such as suspending preferential tariffs on Israeli-settler-made products or an EU visa ban on settler radicals

"The highest price is paid by vulnerable men, women, and children whose rights are violated as they are deprived of water," Ayman Rabi, from local NGO the Palestinian Hydrology Group, noted.

an average 30 per cent decrease in biodiversity since 1970, rising to 60 per cent in the hardest-hit tropical regions

the poorest and most vulnerable nations are subsidising the lifestyles of wealthier countries

June's Rio+20 gathering, the fourth major summit on sustainable development since 1972

WWF is urging governments to implement more efficient production systems that would reduce human demand for land, water and energy and a change in governmental policy that would measure a country's success beyond its GDP figure

the problem of illegal wells is disrupting the government project. There is an excessive pumping of aquifers by local farmers, hotel owners and industrial factories.

the sustainability of Tozeur’s water resources is being threatened by hotels that are making their own illegal wells to pump water. These hotels are not economical in their usage – the consumed water per night in Tozeur hotels may reach 400 liters compared to Kibili families’ consumption, which amounts to approximately 200 liters per night

The Gabes oases is under particular threat due to industrial factories that are pumping from the water table and going beyond the capacities of the oasis to supply the ecosystem it supports with sufficient water. Fadhel Bakkar, an expert in coastal ecosystems in Tunisia, said that another important problem facing the oasis of Gabes is the arbitrary dumping of waste from households. In addition, anarchic urban planning and a growing population has led to the encroachment of the city into the oasis, he said.

One "daily bag" that can be consumed by one person in one day requires hundreds of litres of waters to produce

In 1972, then-Prime Minister Mohsin Al-Aini forbade qat-chewing by public servants during working hours and banned its cultivation on lands run by state-controlled religious trusts. He received death threats from tribesmen and qat farm owners around Sanaa. Many Yemenis suspect his eventual dismissal from office three months later was in large part due to his push.

"As water prices go up, the competition drives more and more people toward farming qat which in turn uses up even more water. If the spread of qat farms continues like this soon all our arable land will be used to grow qat."

everyone chews