How Palestine’s National Flower Mirrors Its People’s Plight
ATMOS (22/7/2025) With the arrival of spring, a carpet of flowers blankets the occupied West Bank. Even the lands scarred by Israel’s 400-mile separation barrier burst into color as the blossoms emerge. In the northeastern village of Faqqu’a, surrounded by Israel’s fence, one flower stands out: a tall iris with large, deep purple petals and sword-shaped leaves. Iris […]
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Ganancias corporativas, pérdidas ambientales: el mayor lago artificial de Europa impulsa olivos intensivos
EL SALTO (19/10/2025) Una enorme presa construida con fondos públicos en el sureste de Portugal prometió desarrollar una de las regiones más áridas y empobrecidas de Europa. Sin embargo, la agricultura industrial de olivos está destruyendo ecosistemas y provocando la erosión del suelo y la pérdida de biodiversidad, mientras grandes corporaciones obtienen beneficios. Las hileras […]
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Western Europe’s largest artificial lake was meant to save Alentejo. It may be doing the opposite
GEOGRAPHICAL MAGAZINE (August) The Alqueva dam promised prosperity for Portugal’s parched south. Instead, it’s fuelling a corporate-driven monoculture that ecologists and farmers warn is destroying the land and the way of life it sustained. On a bright winter morning, Eva Barrocas watches over her sheep as they graze in the olive grove her grandparents planted […]
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Where shepherds coexist with wolves
BBC (9/8/2024) “My two favourite animals are sheep and wolves,” says Miguel Afonso as he looks over his flock of 200 sheep bleating and grazing on the gently rolling hills surrounding the village of Rio de Onor in northeastern Portugal. Holding his sturdy crook, the 34-year-old shepherd doesn’t see his love for wolves as inconsistent […]
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Nurturing Seeds of Freedom in Palestine
YES MAGAZINE (5/8/2024) Surrounded by a 26-foot-high separation wall, barbed wire, and a watchtower, a group of young Palestinians prepares a 3.5-acre piece of land for the growing season in spring. The noise of their hoes shaping the soil mixes with the humming of construction cranes from the nearby Israeli settlement of Modi’in Illit. Established […]
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‘Sometimes I wonder if I’ll come back’: Palestinian birdwatchers defy danger to scan the skies
THE GUARDIAN (6/6/2024) Sitting in the shade of an olive tree in the valley of Ein Qiniya, northwest of Ramallah, wildlife photographer Mohamad Shuaibi starts to enumerate the birds he can spot that spring morning. Swifts and swallows flit and swoop around, a short-toed eagle hovers in the distance, a jay sits perched on an […]
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The rewilding project bringing back prehistoric bovines
BBC (13/3/2024) On a cold, misty morning, a herd of dun-coloured Sorraia horses, an endangered local breed, graze on grass and small shrubs, their short and stocky bodies enveloped in the mist by the Côa river in the mountains of northeastern Portugal. As the sun rises and the mist starts to dissipate, it unveils the […]
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The enduring legacy of Lebanon’s beloved cedar tree
THE NATIONAL (19/5/2023) Draped with snow, the ancient cedars on the mountain slopes of northern Lebanon spread their evergreen branches like arms welcoming visitors. On Mount Makmel, the country’s oldest cedar grove towers over Wadi Qadisha, the “Holy Valley”, where monasteries carved into cliffs for centuries were a place of refuge and meditation. Known locally as Arz […]
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Preserving heat-adapted seeds to feed a warming world
MONGABAY (20/9/2022) Sitting cross-legged in the summer sun, Fatima collects seedpods from fava beans in Terbol, a quiet village surrounded by cypress trees and vineyards in the Beqaa Valley in Lebanon. “It’s my first day here,” she says as she smiles shyly, glancing over the hills she had to cross with her family to flee […]
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In Jordan, a quest for the country’s resilient national flower
WASHINGTON POST (22/4/2022) Sitting beneath the branches of an ancient oak on a windswept hill in Jordan’s highlands during the first week of spring, I’m surrounded by a dazzling array of wildflowers. Purple anemones, red poppies, pink cyclamen, yellow and orange daisies. But one elegant flower stands out in the midst of all the bright […]
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