Did you think I was going to end this trip without a comment on what's happening here on the sustainability front? Wrong. Here's what impressed me: solar-powered hot water heaters widespread in cities large and small. Bike riding, compact cars, electric-powered scooters: all super popular. Solar arrays beginning to pop up in the Negev, land of endless sun. Lots of drip irrigation in evidence in city parks, private landscaping and best of all, in agriculture. But there are some forces, too, in opposition to forward progress when it comes to conservation and zero carbon renewables. Now that Israelis have discovered enormous fields of natural gas in their territorial waters, there's less incentive to subsidize large-scale solar. And now that Israelis are satisfying their water needs using desalinization, there's less incentive to conserve water even though it takes substantial energy to make ocean water potable. Meanwhile, these newfound supplies of water and gas are not making their impact felt in the West Bank and Gaza, where power is intermittent and lands are parched with climate change affecting water levels in rivers and aquifers. But it was heartening to see some small but cooperative projects happening across borders. One in particular makes for a beautiful model. At Kibbutz Sde Eliyahu in the Galilee they've been pioneering biodynamic organic agricultural techniques for decades. Farmers come far and wide to learn about using beneficial insects in lieu of insecticides from the octogenarian Italian transplant Mario Levy. Years ago Mario introduced the practice of using barn owls in the corn fields to feed on the field mice that were decimating the crop. Previously only strong chemicals could keep them away, leading to other problems in the food chain. But the owls have a wide hunting range and know no territorial boundaries, so they were finding their way to nearby Jordan. Not a good thing for the owls who were captured and killed because in the Arab cultures they are believed to bring bad luck. But the Jordanians were eager to learn Israeli techniques for increasing crop yields and before too long they were thinking differently about owls and using them with great success.
At the Arava Institute just north of Eilat where Israelis, Palestinians & Jordanians are researching ways to solve regional environmental problems, we checked out their large solar array. The activities there appear to be thriving. But I also learned from someone at the once robust Israel-Palestine Creative Regional Initiatives (IPCRI) that their international funding for environmental research has dried up over the Israeli government's hardline policies in the West Bank and Gaza. And that's a shame because it's going to take more than a village to deal with the mounting pressures of scarcity and pollution in the Middle East. If the political situation seems hot now, just wait till temperatures really start to rise.
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AuthorSusan. Traveling again. And writing about it. ArchivesCategories
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