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

Is it the Beginning of a New Extinction Era?

The summer of 2023 recorded the highest temperatures in the world, along with natural disasters the likes of which we have not witnessed before. It is true that fires and floods are natural occurring phenomena, but this summer they swept through new areas, and were distinguished by their size,…

Will the EU’s Green Deal Outlive Frans Timmermans?

The heated debate surrounding the selection of a replacement for Frans Timmermans, Executive Vice President of the European Union Commission responsible for climate policy and the EU’s Green Deal, underscores the central place climate secured for itself in the international political arena…

Domestic Tourism Can Protect the Environment

"Had I known that my success would be at the expense of destroying the planet, I would have chosen another job." lamented the founder of one of the largest budget travel and tourism operators in Europe. That was in the wake of the fires in the Greek Islands and the floods in Slovenia, where…

Public Relations to Promote the Green, Not Whitewash the Black

As the forthcoming climate summit (COP28) in Dubai approaches, public relations firms are scrambling to offer their services to clients from both private and public sectors, specifically in the Gulf countries. These legitimate attempts to win new contracts, by seizing the opportunity of the…

Solar Panel Recycling Plant Exposes Skeptics

The multifaceted campaign against renewable energies reminds us of the campaign against natural gas, when its use began to expand in the 1960s. Coal producers hired a group of heavy-weight public relations firms to spread news about the health hazards of gas, and the dangers of pipe explosions and…

One Side of the Coin in Guterres and Birol’s Climate Rhetoric

United Nations Secretary-General, António Guterres, was barely done speaking about the need to stop all investments in fossil fuels, when the Executive Director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), Fatih Birol, stressed the need for an immediate shift towards renewable energy and abandoning…

Mediterranean Environment: Migrants’ Graveyard

While the Mediterranean Commission on Sustainable Development (MCSD) was holding its 20th meeting in Marseille, on the southern coast of France, the region was witnessing the most terrible humanitarian disaster it has known for decades. A fishing boat smuggling migrants sank in international waters…

The Arab Fund... for Environment and Climate

The conference on Climate Action, hosted in Kuwait by the Arab Fund for Economic & Social Development (AFESD), was a milestone in Arab environmental action; going beyond recognizing and describing the problem, to proposing practical solutions, with the participation of major Arab development…

Neither the End of Pandemics nor the Last of Wars

The world has faced massive crises in the last few years, starting with the Corona pandemic, which the World Health Organization declared weeks ago no longer constitutes a public health emergency of international concern, to the ongoing war in Ukraine. This caused major disruptions in supply chains…

Collaboration in the Shadow of Conflicts

The need for Arab cooperation in times of war and peace was behind the establishment of the League of Arab States in 1945, preceding the European Union and most other regional groups in the world by decades. While regional alliances were a sound option at that time, they are an obligation today, as…