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| Foster and Partners |
| In Rugged Terrain The ruins of Cyrene would be turned into a carbon-neutral zone catering to tourism. |
In this remote eastern region of Libya, where the bleak hills resemble a lunar landscape, the Green Mountain Sustainable Development Area is the latest in a spate of recently announced projects that form a sort of environmental coming-out party for this former pariah country.
Fleets of white Mercedes vans ferried guests along newly paved roads for a lamb dinner among the ruins and a signing ceremony presided over by Saif al-Islam el-Qaddafi, eldest son of the Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.
In an area where many residents are illiterate, newly erected signs in crisp white and blue say ''Airport'' in Arabic and English. Development is coming to town.
In an area the size of Wales centered on the Greek ruin here, the younger Qaddafi, a group of wealthy Libyans and a bevy of consultants are planning a carbon neutral green-development zone, catering to tourism and serving as a model for environmentally friendly design, they say.
The plan will protect Libya's fantastic Greek and Roman ruins from haphazard developments as it protects the coastal ecosystem, one of the last remaining natural areas of the Mediterranean.
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Foster and Partners |
A scale model of the project which
is named Green Mountain in honor
of the region in Libya.
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Foster and Partners |
Green Mountain region in Libya. |
Waters off Libya are the last remaining breeding grounds for a number of Mediterranean species, environmentalists say. The idea is that as Libya opens to the outside world it will not become ''like the Spanish coast,'' said the project's financial adviser, Mahmoud A. Khosman. (It will also be a good investment.)But the intention is clearly broader than that. ''They want to show the world that Libya has turned a corner, that they can fit into the modern world,'' said George Joffe, a research fellow at Cambridge who specializes in the region.
Mr. Qaddafi referred to this important subtext in September at a news conference. ''In our area, it's not common practice to talk about environment and emissions and the like,'' he said in English, seated on a plush couch surrounded by slick architectural models erected in the midst of a seventh-century B.C. Greek Gymnasium. ''It's time now to join developed countries. So we make this statement about the environment, about culture.'' With a hint of a grin, he added, ''We are civilized.''
For the inauguration, hundreds of people arrived at a landing strip for the ceremony and party, with music piped in from the Temple of Zeus at sunset. Friends. Royalty. British peers. But there were also experts on waste recycling and sustainable farming, as well as architects, engineers and hoteliers, all hoping for roles in the project.
On paper, at least, Green Mountain is ambitious. But paper is the sole place it exists, and many people here voiced skepticism that it would materialize. Its energy would come from wind and solar power. Its waste would be recycled, and its trash converted to biofuel. Resorts, hotels, villas and residents' villages would blend into the rugged landscape.
With Foster and Associates, the British architectural firm, designing the Green Mountain Conservation and Development zone, and Unesco aiding with restorations, there is no shortage of star power to encourage a project hastily conceived this past summer. Foster was contacted on July 11. ''There are large promises and lots of big names, but it's hard to know what it will mean,'' said Dr. Joffe, the political scientist. ''This type of big announcement is normal for Libya, but hard to know if they'll follow through.''
The icy relationship between Libya and the West has been thawing since Colonel Qaddafi renounced unconventional weapons and paid billions of dollars in compensation for the bombing in 1988 of the Pan American World Airways jet over in Lockerbie, Scotland, a disaster blamed on Libyan intelligence agents. Washington re-established diplomatic relations in 2004.
The release in July of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor from nearly 10 years in prison on charges of deliberately infecting 400 children with H.I.V. has cleared the way for full rapprochement. The Libyans have come a-courting. European politicians, academics and, especially, businessmen have responded happily.
In Libya this summer, there have been Qaddafi-sponsored seminars on democracy that featured British academics, as well as an announcement of a free-market development zone. In September, Colonel Qaddafi announced that Libya would be the host for talks on Darfur.
''A lot of things are moving quickly,'' said Hassam Tatanaki, head of an oil-rich family spread among Tripoli, Cairo and London that has invested in Green Mountain. And contracts with French and German companies have been signed.
Green Mountain also yields clues to future Libyan leadership, experts said. ''One had to assume that there is a lot of jockeying for position right now, and among Qaddafi's sons all want to demonstrate an innovative view of how to be part of the world,'' Dr. Joffe said. Saif, the sponsor of the Green Mountain project, is the current leader, experts say. Educated in Britain, well dressed and fluent in English, he has been a bridge between the Libya power centers and the West.
His Qaddafi Foundation, based in Tripoli and London, was active in helping gain the release of the Bulgarian nurses, hiring Western experts to testify and ultimately raising the compensation of $1 million a child that secured the release. But some doctors involved in the negotiations complained that the foundation seemed to be limited in moving Libyan policies, noting that repeated assurances about the nurses' release were not followed by results.
Here in Cyrene on a tightly orchestrated 24-hour press trip, substance and image blended to create a surreal mirage. Using skills no doubt honed by caring for Colonel Qaddafi, who avoids hotels in favor of Bedouin tents, workers erected ''specially equipped'' silk, canvas, plastic and gauze tents for guests, with electric fans and roses on the beds, in the middle of sparsely populated villages of concrete huts.
There was also important talk of carbon offsets, waste recycling, solar energy and protecting an endangered seal that lives only off the coast.
''We have big plans for touristic development,'' said Mr. Khosman, the consultant. ''But before that starts, we want to make sure there is an authority for sustainability in the region in terms of building codes, ecology, archaeology.''
The developers plan luxury hotels, villas and golf courses, as well as community housing.
The Libyan coast is ''a unique and important and untouched ecosystem, almost the only one left in the Mediterranean -- it's like Sardegna 50 years ago before development,'' said Alessandra Pome of the World Wildlife Foundation Fund for Nature, who is working in Tripoli.
Ms. Pome noted that the area was the last breeding ground for some species of turtles and tuna in the Mediterranean. ''If we carelessly develop the coast here as we did in Spain, Italy and France,'' she said, ''the Mediterranean is going to turn into a swimming pool lined with concrete.''
The foundation, Ms. Pome said, was told of Green Mountain days before the inauguration. She added that she hoped consultations would now be closer.
For archaeologists, this is one of the most enticing regions in the world. Cyrene was a vast Greek city in the seventh century B.C., including temples, gymnasiums and villas with luxurious mosaics. ''This place was really, really rich,'' said Serenella Ensoli [GHF Project Director], director to the Italian Archaeological Mission to Cyrene who has worked on the site for nearly 30 years. She noted that the leader of Cyrene took to the emperor Nero a kilogram of silphyium, a medicinal plant that was more expensive than gold, in the first century A.D. Cyrene was part of the Roman Empire.
Mr. Qaddafi noted that the project would produce tens of thousands of jobs and small industry in an impoverished region. In a speech, he said the project ''had the potential to support the local economy based on environmental and cultural tourism.''
A brochure filled with photos and renderings portrays the project as a green, upmarket version of the luxurious Phuket resort in Thailand, though it is not clear where tourists will come from. Basics like an airport remain to be built.
''They've got 1,000 miles of undeveloped coastline which they are trying to develop in an environmentally friendly way,'' said Anthony Pearce, an environmental consultant and a former head of the International Road Federation. ''You've got to give them credit for that.''
Correction: October 19, 2007, Friday An article in Science Times on Tuesday about an effort in Libya to create a conservation and sustainable development zone misstated the name of the British architectural firm hired to do the design. It is Foster and Partners, not Foster and Associates.
Please direct media inquiries to:
GHF Press press@globalheritagefund.org
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