Every so often, items from our various sources show the significance of multiple standpoints eliciting different perspectives. Much like the parable of the blind men and the elephant. You know the one: one blind man feels the trunk and says an elephant is like a snake; another feels the side and says an elephant is like a wall; another feels the tail and says an elephant is like a rope, etc.
Much has come across our desk recently that bring home how the multiple standpoints on climate and environment in the Middle East elicit differing perspectives. This material is in a two day post. Here is an introduction.
ITEMS IN PART 1 (December 7)
Environment and Development magazine features a post from The Policy Initiative, founded in Lebanon in 2021, which is highly critical of the Lebanese elites and promotes policies it describes as “representative of the interests of the broader public.” This particular post, critical of the Lebanese participation in the Saudi-led Middle East Green Initiative because Israel participates and responding to the Israeli bombing and battles in Lebanon, describes Israel as using environmental cooperation to advance its regional dominance, while at the same time “waging a war against the environment in Gaza” – “ecocide,” and grabbing and water in Gaza, the West Bank and southern Lebanon.
Despite the impact of the devastation and suffering of more than a year on environmental peacebuilding organizations, cross-border, regionally oriented organizations find ways to continue their work. The Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, featured on “Making Peace Visible,” continues, among other projects, to work with Palestinian partners to to bring clean water, sanitation, and eco-friendly temporary housing to displaced people in Gaza.
The year end mailing on “giving Tuesday” from Ecopeace, which has a trio of directors, one each from Israel, Jordan and Palestine, describes the practical work they have continued to do to advance its “twin goals of regional climate resilience and a just peace between our peoples and between people and nature.”
Climate scientists based in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have just published projections that the Middle East could warm by 9n degrees Celsius by 2100. The journal’s sponsoring academic body, the American Geographical Union calls the predicted increase “staggering.”
The failed global negotiations to curb plastic pollution have a Middle East dimension. Like the Saudi campaign to keep fossil fuels off the consensus agreement at COP29 (previously reported) in the case of plastics, Saudi Arabia was reported having “strongly opposed efforts to reduce plastic production and used procedural tactics to delay progress.”
The Middle East Solar Industry Association’s monthly update shows an ambitious and growing regional business sector.
Other items report the agendas and action of individual countries the region. Regional states with oil wealth continue to heavily invest their domestic environmental agendas. Qatar reports a large financial commitment to partnering with Britain in developing climate technology. Saudi Arabia highlights its presentation on land restoration and drought, one example of many national environmental projects at the COP16 of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification.
ITEMS IN PART 2 (December 8, coming tomorrow)
Part 2 continues with reports on Israel and Jordan. They continue to exemplify the importance of standpoint, as domestic news sources strongly focus on the agendas and action of their own countries.
Israel’s National Planning and Building Committee in August approved regulations requiring rooftop solar installations in almost all non-residential buildings and houses. Despite the preference of the National Economic Council for large solar arrays in the Negev, rooftop solar has the advantage of of not using additional land in a small country and, perhaps more significantly, the advantage of decentralization in case of a security threat. Mekorot, Israel’s national water company, reported in November that it had install 5,000 solar panels at one facility and was planning more.
Israel is also opening a pilot wave energy power plant at the Jaffa port, one example of its development of climate tech.
The Jordanian government continues to highlight its environmental initiatives. Chronically short of water, it continues to work on the project to desalinate and distribute water from the Red Sea. With minimal oil and gas potential, energy policy continues to be a challenge, both in accessing short term supply and over the long term. With the resource of large amounts of sun in sparsely populated area, Jordan has been transitioning to much more solar power. Public events and locally hosted international conferences frequently raise consciousness about the country’s environmental challenges and the government’s responses.
There are various views on the message of the parable of the blind men and the elephant. In the context of the material presented over this two days the lesson is this: Multiple standpoints elicit different perspectives. Like the blind men, those who promote knowledge about the region they share may only understands its environmental challenges by listening to each other and encouraging others to do the same.