Trash threatens to engulf historic sites

Today I had wanted to write to you about Phil Goff and the Ghanaian gardeners. But it's a story that deserves illustrations and the small internet cafe in the Syrian oasis of Palmyra has a problem.

The internet is moving at only glacial speed and the chances of sending photos are about as likely as seeing a tap-dancing camel in the street outside.

Apparently a ship has cut a cable wiping out the internet to most of India and reducing the internet speed in the Middle East to excruciating slowness.

But we are all soldering on - the cafe owner is plying us with tea, which it is possible to drink completely in between each laborious online command.

So instead, I am going to tell you about rubbish. Nothing new there you might say, but this is the kind of rubbish that appears to me to represent a more immediate threat to large tracts of our planet than even global warming.

I have spent nearly a month in North Africa and the Middle East and in both areas the land seems in grave danger of being suffocated by swathes of fluttering, tattered plastic bags and mountains of plastic bottles.

Maybe I've not been looking in the right places but I don't think I've seen many high profile environmentalists expressing any concern about this.

Hasn't anyone of any import noticed that the southern and eastern shores of the glorious Mediterranean and its hinterlands are disappearing under a revolting tide of non-biodegradable rubbish?

These are the lands of legend and myth, Roman emperors and Egyptian queens and vast empires stretching back for millennia - how can this be allowed to happen?

Both Libya and Syria have spectacular ruins and desert scenery but the sight of plastic bags blowing across the countryside, bags impaled on olive trees and coastlines clogged with bottles has sickened me.

Mountains of ripped rubbish bags surrounded the entry to a Phoenician burial site, while gullies beside Crusade castles are filling up with revolting detritus.

Sure, one could make all kind of PC excuses - education in some of these countries does not necessarily stretch to care of the environment and in the past, of course, packaging was often entirely nature (such as palm leaves) so people for centuries had cast it aside where it would biodegrade.

Not so nowadays. There are certainly other pressing issues here such as economic development and security. But if something isn't done soon there'll be no land unspoiled to develop and nothing worth protecting.

St Paul, the prophet Mohammad, Alexander the Great, Roman emperors, Crusader kings, Lawrence of Arabia and even Agatha Christie have trodden these lands - I can't imagine what they'd think if they saw them now.

There is perhaps a glimmer of hope in Libya at least. One local scientist has released his findings on the deaths of baby camels in the Sahara.

Most are dying of starvation caused by the presence in their guts of sometimes up to 10kg of solid plastic. The feeling of fullness fools the camels into thinking they don't need to eat and they slowly starve to death. Sometimes all that is left among the dunes are a few bones and the horrible coagulated ball of plastic.

Maybe such publicity will trigger a change of heart and habits here so that future generations of locals and tourists alike don't find they are wading through metres of revolting trash on their way to view what are undoubtedly some of the most stunning ruins and desert landscapes on the planet.

(And when someone has spliced together the underwater cable or whatever one does I will tell you the story of Mr Goff and the Gardeners. Inshallah...)