Middle East - Anthony Ham [86]
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Environment
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THE LAND
WILDLIFE
NATIONAL PARKS & WILDLIFE RESERVES
ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES
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‘The true servants of the most gracious are those who tread gently on the earth.’
Quran, sura 25, verse 63
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Climate Change: Environment and Civilization in the Middle East, by Arie Issar and Zohar Mattanyah, is a sobering study of how the rise and fall of civilisations in the Middle East has always been intricately tied to environmental issues.
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The Middle East is home to some of the most pressing environmental issues of our time. Indeed, there are few regions of the world where the human impact upon the environment has been quite so devastating. More than that, as one of the world’s largest oil-producing regions, the Middle East’s size far outweighs its contribution to the gathering global environmental crisis. There are pockets of good news, but the governments of the region have, in general, yet to realise the urgency of the situation. Given that environmental issues – especially water scarcity – are invariably transformed into security concerns in this part of the world, such delays in addressing environmental issues are luxuries that few governments will soon be able to afford.
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THE LAND
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Egypt has four of the world’s five officially identified types of sand dunes, including the seif (sword) dunes, so named because they resemble the blades of curved Arab swords.
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Wrapping itself around the eastern Mediterranean and with its feet on three continents, the Middle East acts like a pivot for some of the oldest inhabited regions on earth. Appropriately, for such an important crossroads, the Middle East is home to some epic landforms, from the deserts that engulf much of the region and high mountain ranges of the north to some of history’s most famous and important rivers.
Deserts
The world’s largest desert, the Sahara, does more than occupy Egyptian territory – it covers 93% of the country. Although the Egyptian case is extreme, other countries of the region face a similar situation with all of the attendant issues for land-use and water scarcity: 77% of Jordanian and Iraqi territory is considered to be desert, while the figure for Israel and the Palestinian Territories is 60%. Although deserts dominate much of the region, they’re rarely home to the sandy landscapes of childhood imaginings. Apart from the Saharan sand seas in parts of Egypt, sand dunes of any great significance are rare in a region where stony gravel plains are the defining feature.
Deserts, or at least the oases strung out across the wastes, have played an important role in the history of the region. Nowhere is this more evident than in the Syrian oasis of Palmyra (Click here), which became a crucial watering point for caravans travelling the Silk Road and between Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean. The oases of Egypt’s Western Desert (Click here), especially Siwa, served a similar function for trans-Saharan caravans.
The most accessible desert for travellers is Jordan’s Wadi Rum (Click here) with its exceptional sandstone and granite jebels rising from the sands. Stirring expeditions are also possible in Egypt’s Western Desert (which forms part of the Sahara) and the Negev (Click here) in southern Israel and the Palestinian Territories. For more information on desert expeditions, Click here.
Mountains
Although deserts dominate most popular perceptions of Middle Eastern landscapes, mountains provide plenty of their own drama, especially in Turkey and Lebanon. Eastern Turkey is simply glorious with seriously high mountains rising above 5000m – the 5137m-high Mt Ararat (Ağrı Dağı) is the highest mountain in the countries