Egypt: Middle East’s First Climate Change Museum Opens
The Middle East’s first climate change museum opened in Egypt on Thursday at the site of some of the most historically significant and visible signs of the phenomenon in its naturally occurring form.
The museum is located in the Valley of the Whales, a desert area 150 kilometres south-west of Cairo, where whale fossils lie spread across what was once a seabed.
“It’s incredible to be standing in a place that was once an ocean more than 40 million years ago,” said Anita Nirody, the United Nations Development Pogramme’s resident coordinator in Egypt. The UNDP helped implement the museum project, which was funded in part by Italian debt swaps. Under this arrangement, money that was owed to Italy by Egypt was instead used to fund development projects in the country.
Massimo Tomaselli