UAE's climate risks in the spotlight when hosting the World Ocean Summit

By Will Bugler

For the first time in its history, the World Ocean Summit was held in the Middle East. Last month, Abu Dhabi hosted the sixth edition of the event, which is organised each year by the Economist Group’s World Ocean Initiative. The three-day conference highlighted the threat posed by climate change to the world’s oceans, and drew attention to water-related climate risks to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and other Gulf States.

Sea level rise in particular is a significant concern for the UAE, where almost seventy percent of the country’s gross domestic product is dependent on the ‘blue economy’ (including fisheries, maritime transport, renewable energy and tourism). “Any sea level rise is going affect a huge part of our coastal areas. Almost 80 percent of our population is living in coastal areas, so their communities are going to be destroyed,” said Thani Al Zeyoudi, the United Arab Emirates’ Minister of Climate Change and Environment, speaking to CNBC news last month.

The UAE is amongst the most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change. Over ninety percent of its infrastructure is coastal, and estimates suggest that the country could lose as much as 6 percent of its developed coastline by the end of the century. Al Zeyoudi also listed water scarcity as a major risk for the country. “Water scarcity here in the region and the droughts is affecting most of the sectors, especially agriculture, so that is why most of our food is imported from abroad,” he said.

Al Zeyoudi’s interpretation is supported by the UAE’s recently released, climate risk assessment, published in January buy the Ministry of Climate Change and Environment. The report says that the country faces very significant challenges to adapt to a climate that “may impose new and overwhelming pressures on the country’s environment, economy, and society”.

The climate risk assessment considered how climate change phenomena could affect four sectors – human health, energy (electricity and heat), infrastructure, and the environment. Ten priority climate risks were identified which were rated very high or high according to the risk assessment framework developed for the analysis.

The highly interconnected nature of the climate risks means that adaptation and resilience building measures need to be considered across all government departments and economic sectors. This will require increased ambition from the UAE’s in terms of its response to climate change. Its nationally determined contributions (NDC) to greenhouse gas emissions reductions made under the UNFCCC, were rated as ‘insufficient’ and its current policies on adaptation are not sufficient to protect the country from future climate shocks.