The olive sector in Palestine: towards green entrepreneurship, green economy, sustainable development, and wellbeing of socioeconomics and public health, in view of climate change impacts and other challenges

What is it about?

The Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), comprising the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip, is part of Historic Palestine (27,000 km 2 ), with a population of approximately 6 million people, and spans an area of nearly 6,000 km 2 . The majority of Palestinians in the OPT rely primarily on agriculture as their main source of income. Olive trees and their derivatives—fruit, oil, and byproduct waste (solid and liquid)—constitute the largest part of the agricultural sector in the OPT. This research focuses on the links among green entrepreneurship (GEn), the green economy (GEc), and sustainable development (SD), with a particular emphasis on the olive sector in the OPT. Integrating these three dynamics (GEn, GEc, and SD) with the olive sector is a noble and unprecedented objective of this research. However, this approach is difficult to achieve given the numerous challenges and obstacles facing the Palestinian people in the OPT. These challenges mainly include: 1) The geopolitical conditions of the inhumane Israeli occupation since June 1967; and 2) The absence of planning within the Palestinian Authority, which has exercised nominal rule over the people without any real implementation on the ground since its establishment in September 1993. This research presents innovative ideas, initiatives, technologies, services, and products that simultaneously address the three dynamics (GEn, GEc, and SD) in relation to the olive sector. It also examines an innovation within a dynamic subset of GEn, GEc, and SD, focusing on seizing business opportunities that minimize negative environmental impacts while achieving social, economic, environmental, politi- cal, and human value. This research supports sustainable development by mitigating environmental risks, such as climate change, water scarcity, and the lack of food security policies. This can be achieved while preparing to advance the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDGs) by 2030. Although it is extremely difficult for the Palestinian people in the Occupied Palestinian Territory to achieve any of the 17 UNSDGs by 2030, simply taking them into account has positive implications for green entrepreneurship policies, the green economy, and sustainable development, and vice versa.

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Photo by Bastian Cimander on Unsplash

Photo by Bastian Cimander on Unsplash

Why is it important?

This research article has comprehensively investigated, analyzed, and discussed various issues related to the olive sector in Occupied Palestine. These include challenges with respect to political, geopolitical, environmental, water, waste, socioeconomics, gender, etc. It is important to a wide audience of professionals, including academics, scholars, research scientists, decision- and policy- makers, human rights activists, journalists, and many others.

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