Oregon Public Broadcasting

If hear about a wind energy boom in Kurdistan or a flood of LEED-certified buildings in Baghdad in a few years, you might think back to this week.

19 Iraqis finished up a two-week Oregon tour of sustainability sites Thursday. Rob Manning caught up with the delegation at Portland State, to see what “green” ideas from Oregon might work in the Persian Gulf.

A professor stands at the head of a dim Portland State conference room gesturing at slides to a room of about 30. But the whole thing is being filmed and zipped over the internet to Iraq – with translation.

This Oregon-meets-Iraq moment came thanks largely to 28-year-old, Jonathan Mater. He graduated from Oregon State in 2002, and he served in the military in Iraq.

That helped the Mater Foundation get the attention of embassy officials in Baghdad. Mater asked the Oregon universities  and the State Department if a sustainability tour made sense to them. 

Jonathan Mater: “And it did. So, after that, I actually just sent out e-mails, looked up online to see which ones had engineering curriculum, or engineering departments, to see if they would be interested. Got almost immediate replies from them, saying ‘absolutely’.”

Dilshad Jaf directs Engineering Projects’ Affairs for the Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research. He seemed to like what he saw in Oregon. But he chuckles when he about using wave energy in land-locked Kurdistan. 

Dilshad Jaf:  “What we saw – the waves – we can not use them in my country. But we can at least use the wind, because we also have a climate close to this area."

Shahlaa Ebrahim teaches environmental engineering at Baghdad University. She says learning about LEED building standards was a revelation. But she hopes the most concrete outcome of her visit will be a set of five sustainability centers. One would study depleted uranium in southern Iraq.

Shahlaa Ebrahim: “Also, doing a center of air pollution in Baghdad, which is a crowd of people and vehicles. Also, water pollution in Baghdad, also. And solar, wind centers, in the north of Iraq.”

Ebrahim says she’s also excited to share what she’s learned in Oregon with her students, next term.