Libya unveils bold ecotourism project

[tolibya]

CYRENE, Libya: Here in this remote eastern region of Libya whose bleak hills resemble a lunar landscape, the Green Mountain Sustainable Development Area is the latest in a spate of Libyan projects that form a sort of global coming-out party for a country that for decades was a pariah.

Over the weekend, fleets of white Mercedes vans ferried hundreds of guests along newly paved roads for a lamb dinner among the ruins and signing ceremony, presided over by Saif al-Islam el-Qaddafi, the son of President Muammar el-Qaddafi, on Monday. In an area where many people are illiterate, newly erected signs in crisp white and blue say "Airport" in Arabic and English. Development is definitely coming to town.

A group of wealthy Libyans and a bevy of consultants are planning to create a carbon neutral green development zone in Cyrene, an area the size of Wales centered on ancient Greek ruins. It will cater primarily to tourism and serve as a model for environmentally friendly design, they say.

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," George Joffe, an expert on Libya at Cambridge University, said in a telephone interview.

Saif Qaddafi referred to this important subtext in a press conference Monday. "In our area, it's not common practice to talk about environment and emissions and the like," he said in English, surrounded by slick architectural models displayed in a Greek gymnasium dating from the seventh century B.C. "It's time now to join developed countries, so we make this statement about the environment, about culture."

Then he added with a hint of a grin: "We are civilized."

For the inauguration ceremony, hundreds of people were flown to a remote landing strip Sunday night for a party and signing ceremony, with music piped in from the Temple of Zeus at sunset. Experts on waste recycling and sustainable farming, architects, engineers, and hoteliers mingled with royalty. All were hoping to play a role in the project.

On paper, the Green Mountain project is ambitious - although on paper is the only place it exists - and even many here expressed some skepticism that the project would materialize.

Its energy is to come from the wind and solar power. Its waste is to be recycled, its trash converted to biofuel. Its buildings - resorts, hotels, villas and villages for locals - are to blend seamlessly into the rugged landscape.

The plan will protect Libya's fantastic Greek and Roman ruins, as well its fragile coastal ecosystem - one of the last remaining natural areas of the Mediterranean - from the perils of haphazard development. 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 Khosan. It will also be a good investment.

With a brand name British architectural firm, Foster and Associates, designing the "Green Mountain Conservation and Development" zone, and Unesco helping with restorations, there is no shortage of star power to encourage a project that was conceived less than two months ago, and is still in the "vision" stage, as its organizers admit. Foster and Associates was contacted July 11.

"There are large promises and lots of big names, but its hard to know what it will mean," Joffe said. "This type of big announcement is normal for Libya but it's hard to know if they'll follow through."

The tense relations between Libya and the West have been thawing for several years, since Tripoli renounced weapons of mass destruction and paid billions of dollars in compensation for the deaths of 270 people in the bombing of a Pan Am passenger plane over Scotland in 1988. A Libyan agent was convicted in the attack.

Washington re-established diplomatic relations in 2004.

But it was the release of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor from nearly a decade of imprisonment in July that has cleared the way for wider acceptance in the international community. The Libyans have come a-courting and Europeans - politicians, academics and especially businessmen - have responded eagerly.

In Libya this summer, there have been Qaddafi-sponsored seminars on democracy featuring leading British academics as well as the announcement of a free market development zone promoted by another member of the Qaddafi family. On Saturday, the Libyan president announced that Tripoli would host peace talks with Sudanese rebels to try to find a solution to the crisis in Darfur.

"A lot of things are moving quickly," said Hassam Tatanaki, the head of an oil-rich Libyan extended family that is spread between Tripoli, Cairo and London and has thrown its weight (and investment) behind the Green Mountain project. New contracts with French and German companies have been signed in recent weeks.

"This is very tied to the re-emergence of Libya to show that the future is different than our past," said Joe Stanislaw, an adviser to Saif Qaddafi and a Boston-based consultant on sustainable development. "Libya is showing that even as an oil producing country, they can lead in facing world challenges like global warming."

The Green Mountain project also yields clue to the country's future. "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," Joffe of Cambridge said.

Saif, the sponsor of the Green Mountain Project, is certainly the current leader, observers say. British educated, well dressed and fluent in English, he has become the go-to guy, a kind of bridge between the centers of power in Libya and the West.

His Qaddafi Foundation, based in Tripoli and London, was active in helping to gain the release of the Bulgarian nurses, hiring Western experts to testify in the case, and ultimately raised the compensation of $1 million per child that secured the medics' release. But some doctors involved in the negotiations complained that the Qaddafi Foundation seemed to have limited sway to move policy in Libya, noting that repeated assurances about the nurses' release made in meetings were not followed by results.

Here in Cyrene, on a 24-hour tightly orchestrated press trip, substance and image blended into a surreal mirage.

Using skills no doubt honed by caring for the president - who eschews hotels in favor of Bedouin tents - workers erected hundreds of "specially equipped" silk, canvas, plastic and gauze tents for guests with beds, electric fans and roses in a field across the street from a village of cement huts. But there was also important talk of carbon offsets, waste recycling, solar energy and how to protect a species of endangered seals that lives off the Libyan coast.

"We have big plans for touristic development," said Khosan, the project's financial adviser, "but before that starts we want to make sure there is an authority for sustainability in the region, in terms of building codes, ecology archeology." The developers plan to build a series of luxury hotels, villas, golf courses as well as community housing.

In the abstract it is a worthy goal. The Libyan coast is "a unique and important and untouched ecosystem, almost the only one left in the Mediterranean," said Alessandra Pome of the World Wildlife Foundation in Tripoli, noting that it is the last breeding ground for turtles and tuna in the Mediterranean Sea.

"If we carelessly develop the coast here - as we did in Spain, Italy and France - the Mediterranean is going to turn into a swimming pool lined with concrete," she added.

Still, she said that her group had only been informed of the Green Mountain project days before the event and hoped there would be closer consultations in the future.

For archeologists, this is one of the most enticing regions in the world. Cyrene was a vast Greek city in the 7th century B.C., including temples, gymnasiums and villas with luxurious mosaics. "This place was really, really rich," said Serenella Ensoli, director of the Italian Archeological Mission to Cyrene, who has been working on the site for nearly 30 years. She noted that the leader of Cyrene brought the emperor Nero a kilogram of silphyium - a medicinal plant that was more expensive than gold. In the 1st century A.D., the city was part of the Roman Empire.

Saif Qaddafi noted that the project would bring tens of thousands of jobs and small industry to a now impoverished area. In a speech filled with talk of creeping deserts, deforestation and carbon emissions, he said that the project "had the potential to support the local economy based on environmental and cultural tourism."

The project's brochure is filled with photos and renderings that portray it as a green, upmarket version of Thailand's luxurious Phuket resort - though it is not clear where the tourists will come from, and basic infrastructure like an airport remains to be built.

Still, some at the festivities praised the effort. "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, of the 1,600-kilometer untouched area. "You've got to give them credit for that."