Weekly Report March 21st to 26th, 2010

• The previous week, representatives from LTER-Israel’s Arava site and LTER-Jordan met for three days in Aqaba to create joint trans-border research projects. Since the Arava region of Israel and Wadi Araba of Jordan are so ecologically similar, this collaboration is a unique opportunity to examine the different ways in which humans’ interactions with their environment can affect natural existing systems. With nearly thirty ecologists, biologists, socio-ecologists, environmental economists, and politicians in attendance, the diversity of this meeting not only allowed for the creation of transborder projects, but also much-needed interdisciplinary projects. The Arava Institute had 7 employees, 4 alumni, and 2 masters students in attendance.

• This week started out with a very important visit from a delegation representing the Premier of the Province of Ontario, Canada. The delegation was doing a pre-visit of potential sites, the Premier will visit when he comes to the Hevel Eilot region in May. Ontario is very interested in renewable energy and the delegation was very interested in hearing about what the institute is doing in the field. In addition, 4 students from the institute each spoke about their experiences. The delegation was especially interested in hearing about Ben Morgan's experiences at the institute. Ben is from Canada.




• On the same day, Uygar Ozesmi, the Executive Director of GreenPeace Mediterranean came to speak to give a lecture to the Environmental Leadership class. Uygar is from Turkey and told me that their are about 40,000 members of GreenPeace in Turkey, Israel and Lebanon. About 40% of the members are in Israel, about 40% in Turkey and 20% in Lebanon.




• Tuesday night, the students held a cultural evening where students provided their own entertainment with songs, musical performances, dance, karakoe, capoeira and other forms of entertainment. The evening was so successful that another evening is being planned for the end of the semester.




• On Wednesday, the Sababa Steering Committee organized a tour of potential alternative sites for the proposed Hotel Resort / Attraction Park near Timna Park. The committee toured a variety of sites in and around Timna Park. Later that evening the committee met and concluded that there are alternative sites for hotels on a much smaller scale then the current proposal and would require a change in the vision of the proposal to something more appropriate to a national park.

David Lehrer