“With every breath we take, we are connected to the ocean. The ocean gives us oxygen, provides us with food and livelihoods. It stabilizes our climate, absorbing most of the heat trapped in the Earth’s system. Billions of humans, animals, and plants rely on a healthy ocean. But the ocean’s health is in trouble, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy on the Ocean, Peter Thomson, recently said in a recent op-ed.
“Rising carbon emissions are making the ocean more acidic, weakening its ability to sustain life underwater and on land. Plastic waste is choking the ocean. And if we continue on our current track, more than half of the world’s marine species may stand on the brink of extinction by 2100. Solutions exist to restore the health of the ocean, but they will require action from all parts of society, from world leaders down to every one of us.”
“We must not squander the unparalleled opportunities presented by 2022’s confluence of moments for decisive ocean action.”
With these words, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy on the Ocean, Peter Thomson, perfectly sums up the current state of affairs regarding our oceans and their “health” and calls for decisive ocean action to take place. His words of caution were uttered ahead of the UN Ocean Conference 2022 set to take place from 27 June to 1 July 2022.
It is thus an opportune time to look at the region’s efforts in this regard.
Challenges facing the Gulf region’s waters
The Gulf region has particularly been subject to water desalination (a process whereby salt is removed from seawater) and oil and gas offshore drilling for decades. While both practices are important to firstly counter water scarcity and secondly generate vital revenues for the region, they can pose risks on marine environments.
The MENA region accounts for 48 percent of global desalination projects, according to Ventures Onsite, which said that seawater desalination represents over 90 percent of all daily water requirements in the GCC.
Massive consumption of such proportions cannot be replaced overnight and will require some creative countermeasures on the part of both the private and public sectors before regional oceans hit what The Guardian called “peak salt”.
Peak Salt is reached as desalination practices from the Gulf take place, and more concentrated salty water is pumped back into the waters, raising the level of salt in the ocean, threatening marine life, particularly those not suited for highly alkaline (salty) environments.
As for oil and gas offshore drilling, the practice can contribute to water pollution. Firstly, a number of accidental oil spills can potentially take place as a result of drilling processes. Aside from these, the oil industry creates waste through its daily operations, some of which could find its way to the ocean.
Thinking caps are on
While water desalination and oil and gas drilling may be a threat to the water security of the Gulf states, there are, however, many commendable initiatives by agricultural corporations in the UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and others. Conglomerates such as UAE’s Almarai, Qatar’s NAAS, and UAE’s Majid Al Futtaim Group are, among many others, that are prioritizing water conservation by setting water management targets, followed by adopting sustainable water usage methods, and implementing water efficiency devices.
“Since 2010, we have been working on reducing the water impact of our operations through water-efficient landscaping, water-saving fixtures, and reusing grey water,” Ibrahim Al-Zu’bi, chief sustainability officer at Majid Al Futtaim Group, which was recently awarded the prestigious Green Globe certification throughout its entire hotel portfolio across the Middle East, told Reuters last year.
“By investing in water-efficient technologies, we have noticed significant reductions in our water consumption.” Al Futtaim Group was also one of the few firms to introduce vertical farming, known better as hydroponic farming and which uses 90% less water than soil. Hydroponic farming was dubbed by several experts as “the perfect” solution to the Gulf’s water woes.
Finally, one can’t water-generating technique is cloud seeding, which is the act of “weather modification” that aims to change the amount of precipitation that falls from clouds by dispersing substances into the air that serve as cloud condensation, thereby affecting rain. The UAE is leading in this technique and is considered a trailblazer in the Arab world, among many other technologies.
All these novel technologies have the ability to help counter the potential side effects of desalination and oil drilling. Adoption will require better awareness of the challenges oceans face and the sustainable opportunities that could alleviate the stresses on the bodies of water that allow them to thrive.
