Najib Saab
Secretary-General of the Arab Forum for Environment and Development (AFED) and editor-in-chief of Environment and Development magazine

Water Label Besides Energy Label

When shopping for any electrical device, we find a label specifying energy efficiency, usually from best to worse, in classes from A to G. Most countries also classify cars and vehicles into categories, according to fuel efficiency and carbon emissions. Likewise, products we buy from the…

Europe Succumbs to the Farmers’ Revolution

Finally, Europe has succumbed to the farmers’ revolution, with the European Parliament elections around the corner. The main motivation for this turnaround by the European Commission was not to put an end to the throwing of cow dung and burning fodder at the doors of the European Commission’s…

Artificial Intelligence: For Sustainability or Destruction?

Governments, businesses, industries and financial institutions, as well as universities and research centers that do not keep pace with developments in artificial intelligence (AI) put themselves out of the competition. This has become an established fact, as demonstrated by the discussions at the…

Environmental Education for a Sustainable Future

The perception of the environment has expanded in recent decades from fighting pollution to the management of natural resources. The increase in the world’s population from 1.5 billion at the beginning of the twentieth century to over eight billion today, together with a major shift in production…

Misleading Green Labels: From Food and Fashion to Cars

The phrase “Made from recycled materials” was what first caught my eye, printed on a label attached to a sweater. Upon closer examination, I found that the word recycled referred to the small label itself, and not the sweater, which was not made from used or recyclable materials. This is an extreme…

COP23 Protects Marine Life … Who Protects Human Life?

There is no typo in the title, as the subject of the article is indeed COP23 and not COP28. Despite the urgency of the challenges posed by climate change, the world faces other environmental problems that are no less important and cannot be ignored. The twenty-eighth Conference of the Parties to…

Greenwashing, from Facemasks to Hangers

The resounding downfall of the Dutch businessman, who claimed to be able to clean oceans from plastic, brought back to the forefront the need to verify projects that embellish upon the slogans of “circular economy” and “environmental protection”, to ensure that they adhere to the promises,…

Climate Justice and Human Rights

Moments before I started writing this article, I received an invitation from the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) to help collect project proposals aimed at supporting the “environmental human rights of indigenous communities.” At first glance, I thought that the genocide against…

Riyadh Climate Meeting Opens the Way for Arab Action in Dubai

Participants in the Middle East and North Africa Climate Week, which was hosted by Riyadh a few days ago, did not debate whether the climate was changing or not, but rather went directly to devising practical solutions to the inevitable challenge. Instead of just casting doubts and complaining…

Future Shaped by Resource Management

Arab Eco-Futures was the topic of my speech at the opening of Climate Future Week, organized by Museum of the Future in Dubai, in association with Fiker Institute. Main theme of my talk was that the future of the environment is determined by sound management of natural resources. This requires not…