The problem with nature

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Dr Raouf says that the attitude to water in the Gulf is very wasteful. The region is home to 65 percent of the world’s desalination plants.

Arabian Business talks to Dr Mohammed Raouf, the Gulf Research Centre's Senior Environment Researcher, about golf courses, ski slopes and desalination plants.

Who'd want to be an ecologist in the UAE? Dr Mohammed Raouf is a patient and mild-mannered man, but even he must sometimes think his job is an impossible one. In the history of humanity, has anyone ever listened to an environmentalist when there is money to be made?

Dr Raouf is the Senior Environment Researcher at highly respected Dubai-based think tank the Gulf Research Centre. He believes the UAE is trying too hard to defy nature, and that nature in the end will exact a terrible price in return. "You cannot defeat nature," is his mantra, albeit one that is delivered shyly, eyes crinkled behind his glasses, while he doodles on the pad in front of him.

Dr Raouf thinks it is high time the UAE got back to living in harmony with its natural environment and ecosystem rather than trying to shape, at any cost, the environment to its own ends. To put it bluntly, the golf courses and the artificial islands worry Dr Raouf, as do the water desalination plants and the nuclear power aims.

He says: "If you look at history you see that great civilisations manage to deal with their environment. They adapted to and accepted their ecosystems. Natural resources are the real wealth of nations. You have to accept your environment. The whole Arab region comes with a severe ecological deficit. We have no water, we don't have rivers and forests, but then we are blessed with oil and gas and solar energy. You have to accept your system and live in harmony with it."

At the start of our interview, Dr Raouf brings up the subject of ‘greenifying' the desert, by which he means the practice of trying to grow crops on the sand. This way, it quickly becomes clear, he thinks madness lies. Raouf explains that this greenifying is something the Saudis have been doing for decades (planting wheat), and to some extent it has occurred, too, in the UAE. It is an initiative, he says, borne of a desire to achieve ‘food security' and self reliance. But it's not an achievable aim.

"You can't keep planting in the desert. We don't have arable lands. We have very limited water resources, yet we have increasing demand for it. The UAE has also to balance the allocation of all resources, but the most precious resource is water. You have to accept the ecosystem. You have to accept the system like it is, and benefit from it. Look at energy security: other countries don't have their own energy supplies, so they import them from this region. It is the same situation with this region's food security.

No one said you have to achieve food security locally. But what has happened is that as a result of this agriculture and food security, they have used most of the underground water. Many aquifers and wells are dried, or salinised, or polluted as a result of excessive exploitation for agriculture."

Over the last few years, the UAE has started buying tracts of fertile land in places like the Philippines, Pakistan and Sudan which can be farmed. This, Dr Raouf quickly says, is a "wise" policy.

I ask Dr Raouf if he is not being a bit bleeding heart about the water issue. After all, the UAE sits on the seashore, and today we have the technology to desalinate the sea water at will, until it is quite delicious to drink, let alone to use for growing crops.

The question causes him to jerk his head up from over his notepad and widen his eyes, sending his eyebrows heavenwards: "We have a big problem! Water is very scarce here. Rainfall is tiny. We can desalinate, but that requires a lot of energy, and that causes a lot of environmental damage, whether from intakes or outtakes. We don't have a good solution, we have to go for desalination, but you have to reduce all the negative environmental impact. Because many of the desalination plants were built 30 to 40 years ago, and they are not efficient and they are damaging the marine environment. The marine environment is very sensitive and we are promoting the region as a tourism destination. But the coastline is being destroyed."

Dr Raouf complains that the attitude to water in the UAE, and the Gulf in general, is very wasteful. He says the region, which is home to 65 percent of the world's desalination plants, is the second highest per capita consumer of water in the world, after the USA. That's a dubious accolade when that water costs a dollar per cubic metre to desalinate and the GCC consumes 3 billion cubic metres of it a year (2005).

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READERS' COMMENTS

The problem with People
Posted by BRANDO, London, GB on Wednesday 28 October 2009 at 20:22 UAE time


Whilst everything you say is spot on and very logical good luck getting anyone to hear you.

The problem with People is that the pursuit of Money makes them deaf !

Nature will have her own say sooner or later, unlike most humans she is patient !

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