Magazine
Founded in 2010 in Brussels with a global outlook to providing critical but constructive views on the most pressing issues around the world, our award-winning quarterly magazine includes a selection of the ‘best of’ contributions from our digital platform. As an independent publication, we stand for integrity, honesty, and accuracy for our readers to be as best informed as possible.
Start every season with REVOLVE and experience our unique rotating editorial line, focusing respectively on water (winter), nature (spring), energy (summer) and transport (autumn). Bringing together the main themes of sustainability, REVOLVE provides beautiful pull-out photo essays, insightful interviews and sharp opinions, in addition to more in-depth features.
We believe in open source information for everyone: all content is free of access to view, read, enjoy, and to reuse with permission according to our Creative Commons license. All proceeds generated are re-invested in maintaining our journalistic independence and in supporting the next generation of media leaders – see our AMWAJ program for more.
A Bridge over the Barada
Damascus, Spring 2004: you are standing on a bridge overlooking the Barada River near the Old City when a trash bag flies through the air and lands on the cement riverbed. You look around and then another plastic bag flies through the air and crumples next to the thin stream of water. The Barada once flowed from the mountains to give life to the oases along the edge of the desert.
Barada is now the brand of a decent Syrian beer, almost as good as the Palestinian “Taybeh” (“Tasty”) beer brand coming out of Ramallah. And while I did not realize it at that time, that image of the bag stuck with me through the years and became a symbol of the great divide between what we could do to make world cleaner and what we continue to do in this Anthropocene age of ours.
REVOLVE emanates from my time moving around the eastern Mediterranean, and the ambition that that time and space inspired in me to challenge the status quo, to advance more constructive ways of seeing the world, and to identify and present the people and projects driving real change. And as we all know now: everything is changing… constantly.
The Emergence of our Group
The financial crisis hit in 2008. Advertising plummeted in 2009. Over 400 magazines closed in the USA. We go against the grain and turn the ‘best of’ from our online articles into issue #1 of what would become our quarterly magazine in Winter 2010/11. In 2012, we win ‘Best Publication of the Year’ for our special issue on “Water Around the Mediterranean”.
2014: Revolve Media is established. We keep looking closely at what is driving the move towards a cleaner world and decide to highlight the human dimension of the energy transition by showing renewable energies and energy efficiency ‘in action’. This evolved into our flagship public information campaign called VISUALIZING ENERGY that led to other exhibitions with IRENA and UNDP.
The linkages between water and energy become increasingly apparent; connecting the shores of the Mediterranean becomes a metaphor for bridging historical, socio-economic gaps between different regions and continents. We begin identifying projects and providing more insightful and meaningful coverage of the great environmental challenges that define our world today.
In 2015, Revolve Water non-profit is created to focus on water, energy, and innovation issues; in 2016 we launch A Mediterranean Water And Journalism (AMWAJ) under the patronage of HRH Prince Hassan of Jordan; and in 2017 we set up another non-profit in Barcelona to increase our communication outreach and impact around the Mediterranean in Spanish, French and Arabic.
2018: we launch Cities4Forests with 60 cities from around the world signing on to improving awareness about forests and reconnecting nature. 2019: Cities4Forests is featured in REVOLVE magazine and our quarterly print and online coverage continues to grow, gaining more subscribers and contributors, acting as the backbone of everything we do towards communicating sustainability.
At REVOLVE, we believe in seeing the world from “various vantage points” to enlist and empower everyone to become more conscientious of their activities on Earth – the Anthropocene is but a blip on the timeline of history. We encourage countries, companies, cities and citizens to lower their carbon and water footprints by improving energy efficiency and decreasing water consumption.
With proper communication tools, these efforts can foster cultures of sustainability that raise awareness and embed habits that are beneficial for the environment and society. In so many ways, the transition is already underway – everyday there are new sustainable initiatives around the world – we just need a little nudge… or as the great Polish journalist once said:
“To understand our world, we must use a revolving globe and look at the earth from various vantage points.”
Ryszard Kapuscinski, Another Day of Life, 1987, p.137.