The Sahara Forest Project in Jordan is teaming up with the Bellona Foundation, Aker Horizons, the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other partners to identify 121 solutions for the 21st century. The initiative will be presented in a solution-oriented pavilion inside the UN Climate Summit in Glasgow in November.

On Wednesday,​​the Sahara Forest Project in Jordan, Bellona Foundation, Aker Horizons and the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs presented the new Climate Summit initiative for Norwegian and international press on board the Bellona boat Kallinika at the political gathering “Arendalsuka” in southern Norway.

From left to right: Ms. Trude Sundset (Aker Horizon), Kjetil Stake (SFP), Jens Frölich Holte (State Secretary Norwegian Ministry of Foregin Affairs), Frederic Hauge (Bellona), H.E. Richard Wood (UK Ambassador to Norway).

The British Ambassador to Norway, H.E. Richard Wood, set the scene representing the host nation of the summit.

– We want to create partnership between states, civil society and businesses to take concrete action to address climate change. We are absolutely convinced that meaningful change requires close partnerships between all sectors. We need government frameworks, civil society awareness raising, and business to adopt practices that will concretely reduce emission and take account of climate risk in all their actions, UK ambassador to Norway, Richard Wood said.

The UK Ambassador Richard Wood (left) and the Norwegian State Secretary Jens Frölich Holte

The Norwegian State Secretary Jens Frölich Holte emphasized in his speech of how important it is for Norway to send large and mixed delegations to the UN Climate Summit. –I am happy to announce that the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs is proud to be a partner in this new solution-oriented initiative towards the COP26, and contribute with resources in order to make this a success, Mr. Frölich Holte said, whilst humoristically confirming that his Twitter profile photo is from his trip he made to the high-level inauguration of the Sahara Forest Project in Aqaba in 2017.

The Sahara Forest Project looks forward to collaborating with Bellona, ​​Aker Horizons and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs towards and during the climate summit. Sahara Forest Project was launched at the COP15 in Copenhagen in 2009, and has a long track record of taking part at UN Climate Summits.

– The Sahara Forest Project sees COP26 in Glasgow as the starting point for how the world will achieve the UN Sustainability Goals by 2030. We will be present to show decision-makers global, climate-smart solutions for how the world will produce food in arid areas and make desert areas greener, general manager Kjetil Stake said. Mr. Stake is leading the efforts in Aqaba, Jordan.

Kjetil Stake

The industrial company Aker Horizons will contribute with solutions at the UN Climate Summit. Aker Horizons has established industrial companies that develop solutions and realize major projects in offshore wind, solar energy, carbon capture, pure hydrogen, and more.

– International framework conditions are important premises for future success. The Climate Summit in Glasgow is the leading international arena for decision-makers who set the agenda and who, together with industry and the financial markets, will drive the solutions that take us towards ‘net zero’. We look forward to a good collaboration with Bellona, Sahara Forest Project and the other partners before, during and after the climate summit, Ms. Trude Sundset, Strategic Advisor at Aker Horizons said.

For Bellona Foundation, ​​the presence at the UN climate summit started in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. Through many years of participation, the non-profit environmental organization with offices in Oslo, Brussels, St.Petersburg, Murmansk, London and Berlin, has gained extensive experience in how to ensure impact in the international system.

– I consider this to be the most important climate summit of our time. If we are to combat global warming, civil society, governments and the business community must come together in Glasgow. Bellona has been working with carbon-negative solutions since 2008. We know the solutions we need more of in the world, including carbon capture and storage (CCS) and new forms of biomass. Bellona has long and versatile expertise in these issues and has been a pioneer in thinking carbon-negatively,  Bellona Founder and President Mr. Frederic Hauge said.

– Some actors in the environmental movement spend their time talking down the UN climate summits as an arena. I have attended international meetings for 30 years, and Bellona will prioritize the climate summits in the future as well. If we do not talk to each other and and do inspire each other, and then nothing will be solved, Bellona founder Frederic Hauge concluded.

 

For more information about the UN Climate Summit initiative and the upcoming COP26 pavilion:

Magnus Borgen, Director Of Communications & Institutional Relations Sahara Forest Project magnus@saharaforestproject.com

The launch took place in the City of Arendal, Norway

One year after the state visit of their majesties King Harald and Queen Sonja to Jordan, Jordanian vegetables grown in the arid lands of Aqaba arrived in Oslo, Norway. The Sahara Forest Project succeeded to ship 48 boxes, 3.5 kilogram each, of red sweet pointed peppers & red hot chilli peppers after cooperating with Norwegian wholesaler BAMA to bring produce from Aqaba to Norway.

-This demonstrates an international demand for Jordanian products produced in a climate-smart way in the desert, the Managing Director Mr. Kjetil Stake of Sahara Forest Project said. The milestone was reached last week, as peppers from Jordan was brought via ground and sea transportation all the way to Northern Europe.

The vegetables were grown and harvested in a state of the art facility in the Jordanian desert which utilizes, seawater, sunlight, wind and climate-smart agricultural technologies to grow crops inside and outside their Aqaba saltwater-cooled greenhouses all year long. The high-end seeds of the product, called Sweet Palermo peppers, came from the well-known Dutch company Rijk Zwaan.

Director Kjetil Stake emphasized that his staff is currently working hard to scale-up their production in Aqaba, and that their ambition is to turn Jordan’s water scarcity and vast desert lands into new opportunities when it comes to grow high-end agricultural production.

–Using the Sahara Forest Project concept and new technological solutions, Jordanian barriers are turned into new business opportunities for the decades to come, Stake said.

The Sahara Forest Project uses saltwater, sunlight and Jordanian arid land to produce top-notch vegetables. At the same time, the project bring forward a solution to face desertification and food scarcity across the region, whilst creating new high-skilled jobs for young Jordanians.

The buyer of the Jordanian products, is Norway’s largest private distributor of fruit and vegetables. Bama is engaged in wholesale trading of imported and Norwegian-produced fresh produce in fruits, vegetables and flowers.

-It is interesting to see that Sahara Forest Project has been able to plant and harvest at the right momemts in time, and that they have been able to get a satisfactory quality on their red peppers, Procurement Director Mr. Petter Henrik Gathen in Bama told Norwegian news agency NTB.

Mr. Gathen said that Bama is always looking for suppliers in new countries, and that they want to pay close attention to use of new technologies in agriculture. –We are excited to see if this project will manage to scale up their production to reach interesting volumes, Mr. Gathen at Bama said.

Following the arrival at Bama in Norway, samples of the products were brought forward to the Jordanian Embassy in Oslo, and His Excellency Ambassador Janti Kalajoqa were able taste the Aqaba products. “I am happy that the Jordanian vegetables will be introduced to the Norwegian market. Hopefully, this is a great start to further strengthen and increase trade relations between our two friendly countries. Well done to our good friends and all the people working at the Sahara Forest Project, for the hard work and effort they have put into the project making it what it is today, a success. Their use of advanced technology could further develop the agricultural sector in Jordan”, Ambassador Kalajoqa said.

The mission of the Sahara Forest Project, which was inaugurated under the patronage of His Majesty King Abdullah and Crown Prince Haakon of Norway in September 2017, is to green desert areas and to create local green jobs through the production of food, fresh water and clean energy, using saltwater and sunlight as the main input factors, read the statement.

Currently, it operates a three-hectare commercial-size facility 12 kilometers north of the port of Aqaba, combining salt water-cooled greenhouses, solar energy panels and different techniques for outdoor revegetation in dry areas, according to the statement. The governments of Jordan and Norway, the EU Commission and USAID funded the facility.

His Excellency, Senator Malek Kabariti commended the progress SFP achieved since the project started in Jordan.
” This project came upon a request from HM the King in 2010 during a visit to Norway where he invited SFP to build a prototype. Today, HM is instructing the government to focus more on agricultural and water-related issues. SFP experimented with different technologies, what is good about the crops is that it is climate-smart and is produced using renewable energy and seawater and that is a perfect concept for Jordan. Also, SFP has been training individuals and engineers to transform the knowledge and know how to Jordanians. SFP has done a fantastic job to prove the concept and today they are shipping high-quality produce from Jordan to Oslo and the product arrived in perfect condition. I hope the project will expand in size and production scale, and I think the Ministry of Agriculture should explore this project and find ways to enhance cooperation”.

Sahara Forest Project and Al Hussein Technical University (HTU) completed the first phase of the Technical Training Program in Agricultural Technology, where 15 female trainees from seven different universities took part in a field tour of the Sahara Forest Project site in Aqaba.

This program comes to support and empower young women to obtain employment opportunities and the skills required to take leadership positions in the agricultural sector and support the applications of modern agricultural technology in Jordan.

Director of Sahara Forest Project in Jordan, Frank Utsola, expressed his pride in participating in bettering the opportunities of a group of young Jordanian women and widen their horizons to change the future of the agricultural sector in Jordan.

The young women were excited. During the tour, they asked about everything, every tiny detail, which gave me confidence in this group and their ability to find new ideas and applications in the agricultural sector and supports their visions for the future of agriculture in Jordan.

Ms Zein Habjoka, Program Manager at HTU was also positive, saying:

Today we launch a new path for the active female workforce in the agricultural sector. Today we offer students the opportunities, skills, and knowledge required to enable them to assume leadership positions and highly skilled jobs in the agricultural sector.

Yasmine, one of the participants in the program, added:

Participating in this program and interacting with the project managers helped me a lot to understand what I want and how I can achieve it. Here I learned that there are many applications of agricultural technology that may help Jordan make use of its resources better and overcome the food security challenges that it faces.

The female training program is supported by the Norwegian government and Costa Crociere Foundation. The importance of the program stems from the fact that food and water security is one of the most important objectives on the national agenda in Jordan, as it has become imperative to empower the younger generation to support small and large projects that work on the principle of sustainability in energy, water and food.

The training program was designed to utilize partnerships between the academic and industrial sectors, whereby expert Ruba Al-Zoubi and Zeina Fakhreddin guided the trainees throughout the course of the training, in addition to cooperating with the Mira Association to develop irrigation and agricultural methods.

The project harnesses renewable resources such as seawater and solar energy (panels seen on the roof of the building in the picture above) to produce desalinated water and cool greenhouses, which allows the cultivation of all types of crops throughout the year and makes the use of arid lands possible.

Sahara Forest Project was inaugurated in Jordan in 2017 under the patronage of His Majesty King Abdullah II of Jordan and His Royal Highness Crown Prince Haakon of Norway.

The current demonstration facility is located 12 kilometres outside the city centre of Aqaba. It uses saltwater, sunlight and desert areas to produce vegetables, freshwater, biomass and clean energy. The ambition of the project is to rapidly scale up- It is the understanding of the parties that the new land will have an area of 200,000 SQM allocated to develop the project, and another 300,000 SQM for further roll-out.

Photos: Asmahan Bkerat