Climate change conference and more – Mazin Qumsiyeh

The Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability continues to
progress and achieve. We have monthly meetings of staff and volunteers.
Here is a recording of the last (28th) monthly meeting
https://youtu.be/y5sV2LKDz2Q

The COP27 (27th conference of parties to climate change agreement) is
meeting in Sharm Al-Shaikh, Egypt this week. Below is a link to view
events. Unfortunately, this conference attended by tens of thousands,  like
the ones before it, will not take needed steps to affect a change. It will
be more bla bla bla (as Greta Thunberg said). It also helps prop the
dictatorial regime of Sisi in Egypt which is holding and touring tens of
thousands of political prisoners.  It is time for a revolt globally against
the global system that is serving corporate (and colonial/imperial) wants
instead of people’s needs.
COP27 youtube channel
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCASNGUR_tKXjDFW0K6LDHrg/streams
https://ufmsecretariat.org/mediterraneanpavilion/agenda

Here is a paper we did on climate change issues in Palestine
https://www.palestinenature.org/research/159.-Qumsiyeh-et-al.pdf

Palestine: Where Manufactured Water Scarcity Meets Climate Change
https://currentlyhq.com/global/palestine-where-manufactured-water-scarcity-meets-climate-change/

Recording from our Global Biodiversity Convention Day 2 Session 7A  Applied
Research Related to Biodiversity https://youtu.be/2-vxcl4lbT8

Sunday November 6 at 1.30 pm PDT, please tune in to KPFK.ORG or 90.7 fm in
Los Angeles for SWANA Region Radio or on https://anchor.fm/swana . In the
context of the latest round of global climate meetings in Egypt, SWANA
Region Radio collective member David Lloyd interviews Palestinian
environmental scientist and human rights activist, Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh
from Bethlehem University. As we go on air, COP-27, the annual meeting of
heads of state and their climate specialists, NGOs, and, of course,
representatives of the major oil and gas corporations, gathers in Sharm El
Sheikh, Egypt. Most observers anticipate yet another collective effort by
the major industrial states to defer action on the increasingly critical
and undeniable need to roll back carbon and methane emissions immediately.
The UN’s latest IPCC climate report, as UN Secretary Guterres warned, shows
that “Global and national climate commitments are falling pitifully short”
and that countries’ strongest climate pledges put the Earth on a path to
warm by a dangerous 2.4 degrees Celsius (4.3 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end
of the century. But the excuses offered by the war in Ukraine and the
related food and fuel shortages, by global inflation, and by economic
recession will almost certainly lead to further inaction at this latest
round of delay and sabotage by governments and their paymasters, the
polluting corporations for whom the current crises have spelt a bonanza of
windfall profits.

Meanwhile, hosting the conference will be a propaganda and diplomatic coup
for Egypt’s dictatorial President Sisi and his brutal and repressive
regime, which currently holds at least 65,000 political prisoners subject
to torture and miserable conditions in Egypt’s jails, including blogger and
human rights activists Alaa Abd El-Fattah, whose case we have been
following here on SWANA Region Radio.This week, more than a dozen Nobel
Literature laureates called on world leaders to pressure the COP27 host,
Egypt, to free the “thousands” of political prisoners languishing in the
country’s prisons, including Abd el-Fattah. Bitter experience tells us that
any such effort on the part of world leaders will be minimal at best and
that COP-27 may merely offer Sisi another excuse for further crackdowns.
Listeners wishing to help in freeing Alaa can get information at
https://www.accessnow.org/free-alaa/#what-you-can-do or https://freealaa.net
.

On this episode, we will focus on what COP 27 and, more importantly,
climate change or global heating mean for the Eastern Mediterranean, for
historic Palestine, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon.  What has been the impact on
historic Palestine of Israel’s colonization and much vaunted “development”
of the region on the delicate and fertile ecology of this ancient land?
Does Israel’s spurious and well-worn propaganda claim to have “made the
desert bloom” actually mask its ongoing destruction of Palestine’s
environment, its uprooting of ancient olive groves, or its extensive
plantations of pine forests to rapidly cover the ruins of the Palestinian
villages it has destroyed? Is its massive water consumption exhausting the
limited groundwater available even as it denies Palestinians equitable
access to that precious resource? What is the impact of its intensive
agricultural projects on the Jordan Valley, the Naqab and elsewhere on both
the ecology and the flora and fauna of this fragile environment? How has
Palestine been impacted by the process of desertification that affects the
larger region, from Syria to Yemen and East Africa?

Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh, by training a Zoologist and Geneticist, teaches
and researches at Bethlehem and Birzeit Universities. He previously served
on the faculties of the University of Tennessee, Duke, and Yale
Universities. He and his wife, Jessie Chang, returned to Palestine in 2008
starting a number of institutions and projects such as a clinical genetics
laboratory that serves cancer and other patients. They founded and run (as
full time volunteers) the Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and
Sustainability (PIBS) at Bethlehem University, which has become a “Mecca”
for visitors to Palestine from around the world.  Professor Qumsiyeh has
published over 140 scientific papers on topics ranging from cultural
heritage to biodiversity to cancer. His many published books include Bats
of Egypt, Mammals of the Holy Land, Sharing the Land of Canaan: Human
rights and the Israeli/Palestinian Struggle and Popular Resistance in
Palestine: A History of Hope and Empowerment. Popular Resistance in
Palestine is published electronically (see http://qumsiyeh.org). He
especially believes in youth empowerment towards social and environmental
causes and serves on the boards of a number of Palestinian youth and
service organizations. Qumsiyeh has himself been harassed and arrested for
non-violent actions but also received a number of prestigious awards for
these same actions.

This show is co-hosted and co-produced by SWANA collective member David
Lloyd and is edited by Ankine Antaram. If you miss our live broadcast on
kpfk.org, you can listen to this show and our previous shows on Spotify,
Anchor, Google Podcasts, Breaker, and Radio Public. You can also follow our
updates on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. SWANA Region Radio is run
entirely by the volunteer efforts of our collective: Ankine Antaram, Nyma
Ardalan, Inara Khankhashi, David Lloyd, Hamoud Salhi, Rana Sharif, & Soraya
Zarook. We appreciate any amplification of our work. We thank you for
listening and sharing!
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Stay Human and keep Palestine alive

Mazin Qumsiyeh
A bedouin in cyberspace, a villager at home
Professor, Founder, and (volunteer) Director
Palestine Museum of Natural History
Palestine Institute of Biodiversity and Sustainability
Bethlehem University
Occupied Palestine
http://qumsiyeh.org
http://palestinenature.org
facebook pages
Personal https://www.facebook.com/mazin.qumsiyeh.9
Museum https://www.facebook.com/PIBS.PMNH
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