About Carboun
Carboun is a non-profit volunteer-based advocacy initiative promoting sustainable cities in the Middle East and North Africa region. Carboun focuses on the built environment and urban systems of regional cities, and advocates a sustainable approach for their development that balances economic development and a reduced impact on resources, and the environment. It also advocates leveraging urban resilience as a tool for long term urban sustainability.
Carboun’s geographical scope focuses on the economic, environmental, and developmental conditions predominant in the countries of the wider Middle East and North Africa, including the Arab World, Iran and Turkey. The initiative’s name, Carboun, is a transliteration of the Arabic pronunciation of the element Carbon, the most elemental constituent of life, the source of our energy, and more recently, the main driving factor behind our planet’s climate change.
Carboun’s website provides an online journal for sharing information relating to urban sustainability in the cities of the Middle East and North Africa region covering a range of urban systems and components including energy use, water use, sustainable design and urbanism, transportation, carbon emissions, climate change resilience, material resources, waste, and urban environment.
The Carboun initiative is engaged in a number of regional projects relating to sustainability in cities. The initiative’s current projects cover energy use in buildings, carbon emissions, and impact of climate change on the region. Carboun is also engaged in a number of national-level projects.
The Carboun initiative was founded in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2009. Carboun is a member organization in Climate Action Network International (CAN International).
Carboun Founder
Karim Elgendy, Founder and General Coordinator
Karim’s interests include urban sustainability and resilience, climate policy, energy transition, urban metabolism, and the circular economy. His current work focuses on the Middle East and North Africa region, especially around the Eastern Mediterranean and the Gulf, but his two decades of experience also span Europe, North America, and sub-Saharan Africa.
Karim has written tens of articles and publications. He has been invited to over one hundred public speaking engagements and has delivered guest lectures at some of the world’s leading universities. He is regularly interviewed and quoted by TV, print and digital media, and has appeared in most mainstream media outlets including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Financial Times, BBC, Reuters, Assiciated Press, Bloomberg, CNN, NBC, ABC News, PBS, NPR, Le Monde, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Christian Science Monitor, Independent, France 24, Aljazeersa, Al Arabiya, Sky News Arabia, TRT, Asharq, and RT.
Karim is the recipient of the 2013 Green Building Entrepreneurship Award by the World Green Building Council, is a chartered member of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), and has a masters degree from the University of California, Berkeley. He can be reached at Karim [ a t ] Carboun [ d o t ] com.
Stay in touch with Carboun on Social Media
Carboun’s networking group on Linkedin is a forum for professionals researchers to network and share common interests relating to sustainability and the environment. Carboun’s group is the largest Linkedin group focusing on sustainability in the Middle East.
Carboun Feed on Twitter and on Instagram contain a feed of news and developments in Arabic and English (handle for both is @CarbounCities)
Carboun’s Page on Facebook at www.facebook.com/carboun, also contains additional updates on news and developments relating to Middle East Sustainability.
Carboun’s YouTube page is where we publish our short and long format videos.