In the desert culture of Oman, camels are more than a transport system, camels are status, heritage, used for health products – especially their milk, and sometimes camels are beauty queens. But at this year’s 2026 Camel Beauty Show Festival in Al Musanaa in Oman, judges had to disqualify some of the contestants for the enhancements used to look their best.

Some 20 camels were disqualified by contest inspectors who found cosmetic enhancements used on the camels including Botox, dermal fillers, hyaluronic acid injections, and silicone used to inflate humps or alter facial features or the skin on the camels neck. Maybe one day the same beauty standards will be applied to women who undergo insane procedures to enhance their looks.

Related: the benefits of camel milk

We wrote about Botox on camels in 2018 at Saudi Arabian festivals and the practice hasn’t stopped. Camel beauty competitions judge animals on a variety of measures such as coat shine, neck strength, head shape and the size and symmetry of their humps. Winning camels, and those with the longest lashes and fullest lips, can increase their value by the thousands when used in breeding markets.

Festival organizers say they are starting to take a serious stance and are cracking down on beauty forgery and use X-rays and scans to see what Botox can’t hide: the beauty under the skin.

The stakes for beautiful camels are high. Some camels can fetch millions of dollars in prizes, including pageants at the Saudi Arabian King Abdulaziz Camel Festival, where similar cosmetic cheating has led to disqualifications in past years.

Festival organizers have said they are working to halt “all acts of tampering and deception in the beautification of camels,” adding that they would impose “strict penalties on manipulators” going forward.

Veterinarians and animal-welfare advocates warn that injecting camels with cosmetic substances can cause pain, infection and long-term health complications. In some cases the animal body parts are plumped by elastic bands that restrict blood flow and which can cause animal suffering and pain.

In Saudi Arabian camel contests that fetch prizes worth $60 million USD, owners are also required to swear on the Quran that they are telling the truth about camel appearance and ownership. Judges report that this is proving to be the best tactic to weed out cheaters.

In the desert, it seems even camels are not immune to the global pressure to look perfect. What’s worse is it’s a form of animal abuse, and such critiques should be passed on to people choosing wives, even if you don’t have to trade a certain number of camels to get one.

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Getty Conservation Institute partners with Department of Culture and Tourism-Abu Dhabi to teach conservation best practices

Local and international experts will gather in Al Ain, United Arab Emirates and Nizwa, Oman from October 22 to November 19, 2022 for the International Course on the Conservation of Earthen Architecture. This follows a similar and recent course on mosaic restoration.

This one-month training course will use Al Ain, UAE as an open-air laboratory for participants to learn practical, hands-on methods for preserving earthen buildings and archaeological sites. On a study trip to Oman, participants will carry out an exercise on the conservation of urban settlements made of earth in Nizwa’s al Aqr neighborhood, an ancient, fortified city built with earthen bricks.

Earthen Architecture Course topics include:

• Conservation theory and principles
• Laboratory and field analysis of earthen materials
• Earth as a building material—use and construction techniques
• Mechanisms of decay—material and structural
• Methods of recording for documentation and analysis
• Conservation methodology—Planning of conservation and rehabilitation interventions
• Practical conservation methods—structural and non-structural
• Conservation of earthen archaeological sites and decorative surfaces
• Maintenance and preventive conservation
• Developing rehabilitation and adaptive re-use projects for earthen buildings

A study trip to Oman where participants will carry out an exercise on the conservation of urban settlements made of earth (Manah village, near Nizwa, Oman)

A four-story castle made from mud and sand

Earthen architecture is one of the oldest and most widespread building types in the world. Despite its long history, however, it faces many threats to its preservation. It’s also not earthquake proof.

In the Middle East and North Africa region, earthen buildings are under threat from a variety of factors including abandonment and population displacement, earthquakes, and climate change.

Unreinforced buildings made of earth can be extremely vulnerable to earthquakes, subject to weakening and even collapse, especially if they are poorly maintained. Similarly, climate change and erratic weather events such as monsoons and floods are especially destructive to earthen structures and settlements.

Located in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, Al Ain is known as the “Garden City” of the United Arab Emirates. It is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site with a 5,000-year history of settlement in oases, archaeological sites and buildings constructed with earth.

Sites that will be visited by participants include Al Jimi and Al Qattara Oases and Hili Archaeological Park.

“Al Ain is the ideal setting for the earthen architecture course because of its rich heritage, central location in the region, and the expertise of DCT Abu Dhabi in heritage management and conservation,” said Susan Macdonald, head of Building and Sites at the Getty Conservation Institute. “Participants will gain theoretical and technical experience needed to preserve their home country’s earthen heritage.”

Yemen’s mud city of skyscrapers

Yemen, for instance, is home to one of the most impressive, one of the oldest and also one of the tallest mud cities in the world. Before the city scrapers of New York, the city of Shibam had built high rise apartments out of mud which tower to over 100 feet and are between 5 and 11 storeys high.

Dating back to around the 2nd century CE, the city was built using local clay and is still home to around 7,000 residents who live in the fortified city.

Although it is over 2,000 years old, rain and erosion necessitates constant maintenance, which efforts are now supported by restoration and urban development programmes. Nicknamed Manhattan of the Desert, the city is testament to the durability of mud not just for single structures but also for modern high-rise living.

While attendance for this class is now closed, be in touch with the Getty Institute to learn about future earth architecture opportunities. If you want more inspiration from the Middle East, see more on Iran’s Nader Khalili, and earth architect Hassan Fathy. If you are in the United States, learn more about local straw building through Bill and Athena Steen. I had the pleasure of staying with them for a week about 20 years ago. Their strawbale building projects at Canelo are still going strong. And are more relevant than ever.

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Is the future electric? With cities choking for air, gas prices at an insane level and climate change on our minds, consumers are looking for more efficient and sustainable ways to get around. Electric cars may have reached the turning point in the last year where people no longer see it as the car of the future. 

Automakers from Tesla to Rivian to Cadillac have invested in EVs and consumers still want them even though global market conditions and rising commodity costs for key materials in EV batteries have driven up the cost by as much as 20%.

Despite this the wealthy oil nation of Oman has unveiled its first all electric vehicle, the Mays i E1, and now Turkey, always seen as a bridge between Europe to the west and the Middle, has unveiled its first all electric car. It’s called the Togg.

In 2017 Turkey’s President Erdoğan started the country’s first electric vehicle company. His government built a coalition and in 2019 a couple of concept cars were presented. 

Americans were able to see the cars at CES in Las Vegas in January. As Shai Agassi from Israel learned when trying to start an all electric car company out of Israel 15 years ago, called Better Place, electric cars need to be reasonably priced and they need to be attractive. By the time his car was unveiled, along with Peugeot, neither the car nor the price point cut the mustard. There was no status in driving one and the masses couldn’t afford to anyway, and the almost billion dollars invested in the idea went down the drain. You can look through our archives to learn more about the business model and the eventual decline of Better Place.

This all happened before Tesla and before Musk started building his infrastructure in California. Even Governor Gavin Newsom was keen on the Israeli Better Place for California (see our story from 2008). 

Togg turned to car designer Murat Günak who designed the car to look like it’s a generic SUV you can find in Mazda, Volvo, VW or BMW. A safe place. Not what Tesla did. Is it a box or bubble? Read this NY Times article. We’d like to expect something more exciting from Turkey. Islamic design has always been a step above that of the west in my opinion. Next line, maybe be a bit more daring and not follow the pack?

While Turkey once ruled a vast empire in the west and east, it struggles now to hold alliances between Europe and Russia. Recently Prime Minister Erdogen told Finland and Sweden not to join NATO. Not that they will listen unless Erdogen threatens to send Turkey’s vast number of its 3.6 million Syrian refugees to European borders.

The truth is that Turkey would love to be part of the EU and no matter what it does or doesn’t do, Europe is not ready to let Turkey play.  Its role in the Middle East is no longer what it was to Europe, I assume, now that the UAE and Saudi Arabia enjoy oil wealth and have stepped into becoming modern nations. I guess to play it safe Turkey needs to follow, not lead in EVs.  

A novel idea would be to employ the Syrian and Afghani refugees in the new Turkish EV plant but I assume Turkey nations would be vying for those jobs themselves. I am a daughter of a GM employee who worked in a Canadian plant all his life. I also worked for Chrysler on weekends when I was going to university. Car plants can pay well.

Car plants can also improve the welfare of communities if labor benefits and a good salary are paid to employees. If Turkey does this right that might be able to earn a much better standing in alliances with the west.

In Turkey, car production will be supported by government incentives and they will be built on Turkish soil. A JV with a China EV battery company Farasis (in a JV called Siro) will keep the supply chain close to home, a worry in an unstable commodities market. Daimer and Mercedes also work with Farasis.

The Turkish government has also committed to buying 30,000 cars over the next 10 years. A VAT exemption, income tax withholding support for 10 year, qualified personnel support (up to $24M USD) are some of the other corporate incentives the government has agreed with.

I am looking forward to how this news rolls out. Togg could be the electric bridge we need between the east and west. 

::Togg

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Plants from the past and used in the Bible may help us against modern ailments. Research studies to produce medicines capable of fighting COVID-19 from frankincense trees in Oman are being jointly undertaken by the University of Nizwa in Oman and the University of Oxford in England according to the Bahrain News Agency.

Ancient trees and plants from the Holy Land in Israel and written about in biblical times may have the power to heal modern ailments. We have heard a lot recently about CBD and THC from the cannabis plant but there are thousands of natural sources of medicine all around us waiting to be discovered. A recent UN report list 12 wild plants in need of protecting and one of them is based on this new research. 

The new research project is looking to isolate certain key compounds from frankincense – known for its healing properties – and to use them to make antibiotics.

The resin contains large numbers of naturally occurring chemicals that could be used to inhibit the ability of the COVID-19 virus to infect people, the researchers suspect.

“We realised that the properties of these compounds being anti-inflammatory can be very beneficial, because we could use these to inhibit the m-protease protein in the COVID virus,” Dr Ahmed Sulaiman Al Harrasi, the Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Studies at the University of Nizwa, said.

“This protein is present in the spike protein of the virus, which is used to enter the host cells, such as the lungs, in the case of humans. We ran models of the m-protease, in which we treated this with our active drugs,” he added. “We could see a very strong binding between the two, which means the inhibition of the virus by these compounds could be very strong.”

The project is led by Dr Al Harrasi, who also serves as the Chair of the Natural and Medical Sciences Research Centre, which he helped found, and is conducting this research, and Dr Christopher Schofield, the Head of Organic Chemistry at Oxford. 

“It starts with the isolation of active ingredients from the frankincense resin,”Al Harrasi said.

“It then has to go through several procedures conducted here. Some of these are self-developed methodologies and protocols that helped us isolate these bioactive components, purify them, and then characterise them. We came to know their structure through different spectroscopic techniques such as nuclear resonance, X-rays and mass spectrometry. Various techniques are used to identify and elucidate the structure of those components used to make drugs isolated from frankincense.”

The resin was chosen for this research as it contains a high number of boswellic acids, known to be excellent anti-inflammatory components, which have been used to treat ailments such as diabetes, cancer, joint pain and Crohn’s disease.

“Some of these are about to reach pharmacy shelves as real drugs.”

The next step of the research will involve testing the quality and strength of the compounds isolated from frankincense.

Protecting wild plants

There are wild ingredients found in your home that are now under threat and which could be the medicine of the future. Brazil nuts, argan oil, and shea butter are now classified among a dozen wild, threatened and at risk plants known as flagship species that need protecting.

A new report published by the UN called Wild Check: Assessing risks and opportunities of trade in wild plant ingredients, sheds light on twelve flagship species – the so-called “wild dozen” – that are hidden in our everyday products.

Thousands of species are at risk primarily due to habitat loss, as well as other factors such as climate change and over-exploitation.

Of the 21 percent of medicinal and aromatic plant species whose vulnerability status has been assessed, nine percent are considered threatened with extinction. About 1 billion of the world’s most vulnerable people are thought to depend on them for their livelihoods.

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Mays Motors with Noor Majan reveals the prototype of the Middle East’s first electric car. It will go into production in 2023. We first heard reports of an electric car in the making in 2010 and wasn’t sure if it was an April’s Fools joke or not. As April rolls around again, 12 years later, we are enjoying the news that Oman plans on producing its own electric car. 

It will be called the Mays i E1 and some 500 of the Mad Max looking trucks have been pre-ordered, according to Haider bin Adnan al Zaabi, a co-founder of Mays Motors.

The company plants on expanding after an investment and will show of its new motor in Dubai at the STEP International Conference, one of the largest conferences related to tech companies and investments in the world.

Zaabi says that Mays Motors has started work in a small factory in Barka and they plan to sell globally. Parts, shipping, global rollout is a big deal.

Zaabi tells a local paper Muscat Daily he is also hopeful of spurring job opportunities as the company increases production. “We will create more job opportunities for Omanis. We are working with some private companies and Shell to set up recharge points in petrol stations across Oman to cater to demand.”

Mays i E1 has a carbon fibre body, a range of 500km on a single charge and can accelerate zero to 100km/hr in less than four seconds.

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Gulf nations unite to build the first solar energy power plant in Oman: The Ibri II is a 500MW photovoltaic solar power project located in the Ad-Dhahirah region of Oman. The size of it will power about 50,000 homes.

Now completed, it is the first utility-scale renewable energy facility in the Sultanate of Oman. Until now, Oman’s primary source of energy was natural gas, with a small percentage of diesel fuel in the mix.

 

The Ibri power plant is built, owned and operated by the Shams Ad-Dhahira Generating Company, a special purpose vehicle incorporated by ACWA Power of Saudi Arabia, (50%), the Gulf Investment Corporation (40%), and the Kuwait-based Alternative Energy Projects (10%).

“As a company that is driving the transition globally, we are extremely proud to play a key role in supporting the Sultanate of Oman’s ambitious Vision 2040 energy transition goals,” says Mohammad Abunayyan, ACWA Power Chairman, pictured below. “Since our market entry into Oman in 2011, we have brought in significant foreign direct investment, because we believe strongly in its vision and future.”

ACWA Power from Saudi Arabia develops, invests in and operates power plants and desalination water plants in 12 countries. ACWA Power’s portfolio, with an investment value in excess of USD 67.1 billion, can generate 42.6 GW of power and produce 6.4 million m3 /day of desalinated water.

Gulf Investment Corporation based in Kuwait is a supranational financial institution owned equally by the 6 Gulf Cooperation Council states. GIC has paid-up capital of US$ 2.1 billion, and may be characterised as being part-sovereign wealth fund, part-private equity house and part-investment bank.

According to this report, The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region plays a vital role in shaping the global energy markets because of its substantial amount of hydrocarbons resources. Although the GCC has abundant hydrocarbon resources, countries in the region have also shown their commitment and intent to become the global leaders in alternate energy. All the countries in the Middle East have also set targets for the deployment of renewable energy at the federal or local level.

The Ibri II solar power plant is backed by a 15-year power purchase agreement with the Oman Power and Water Procurement Company (OPWP). Ultimately solar power plants get built with incentives: investors put down the money and then are promised high feed-in tariff rates for a fixed time, usually the life of the solar panels – about 15 or 20 years. 

(You don’t need to be a big company to go solar. See our DIY solar guide here).

Financing of $417M USD was finalised in March, 2020 and the solar plant was just made operational. When it reaches its peak production capacity the Omani solar power plant will power 50,000 Omani households while offsetting approximately 340,000 tonnes of CO₂ emissions a year.

Located in a 10 square mile undeveloped area within the Ibri Wilayat Province of the Ad-Dhahirah Governorate of Oman, the power plant is about approximately 200 miles away from the city of Muscat and about 80 miles from the UAE border.

Solar Units Built by China

Powerchina Huadong Engineering Corporation (HDEC), a subsidiary of Powerchina, is the engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) contractor for the project.

China-based Jollywood supplied the solar modules, while Sungrow is supplying the inverters. The First National Operation and Maintenance Company, a subsidiary of ACWA Power, will be responsible for the operation and maintenance of the Ibri II solar farm. Yahya Engineering and 5 Capitals Environmental & Management Consultancy were engaged in conducting the environmental and social impact assessment.

The over all aim of the plant and ones to come is to reduce Oman’s dependence on fossil fuels. 

Oman declares that 11% of its electricity will be from renewables by 2023, and 30% will be renewably sourced by 2030. Even though it is one of the countries with the highest solar densities (potential to go solar) in the region, it has only started thinking about going solar because the state is gifted with natural resources such as natural gas.

If you have a proposal, bilateral agreements and solar tenders will need to be run through the Oman Power and Water Procurement Company to succeed.

Gulf Country Fuel Sources and Opportunities

According to PV Magazine the Middle East is seeing strong growth in solar this year: “The Middle East, and the Gulf in particular, has been home to record low solar tariffs in recent years,” says the report.

“Major projects are being awarded via tenders, with prices gradually closing in on a remarkable $1 USD ct/kWh. Of course, this is no coincidence due to the region’s favorable solar conditions: availability of cheap and sunny desert land, low labor costs, cheap project financing, supportive tax regimes, large projects benefitting from economies of scale, well designed tender structures, and decreasing PV component prices.”

I’d add that Saudi Arabia is also a leader in these developments, swooping into new areas like Oman for instance, but also into the development of alternative fuel sources and storage, like hydrogen. I’m a fan of their exploration and confidence in new energy sources (they have fat wallets and can take risks) and less a fan of their newly in-development city called Neom, purported to be a sustainability city made from dreams.

Plenty of Europeans are swooping in wooed by Saudi money and offering elaborate solutions to Saudi Arabia that might better come from local and indigenous sources. Read the book Lo-Tek for a primer on what those solutions might look like.

Also with an oil tanker about to explode on the coast of Yemen any dreams of an ecological paradise in Neom will soon turn into a nightmare when everything is coated in bitumen. The tanker held by Houthi rebels is in the crossfire between escalating conflicts in the region that will make the Exxon Valdez explosion look like child’s play. 

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Falaj, also known as qanat or aflaj, is an ancient water management system, that has watered the Arabian Peninsula’s arid lands for centuries. Qanat comes from the Semetic word meaning to dig and some say that the qanat systems are as long as the distance from the earth to the moon. Long-ago tribesmen found underground springs in the foothills of the region, and engineered a technology that channels the water over the land, irrigating farms and oases and supplying households with water as needed.  Although some say that falaj is a concept 3000 years old, others claim 5000 years. We reported on the Al-Baydha project for regenerative agriculture in Saudi Arabia with similar aims here.

What we do know is how admirable and sustainable the falaj system is, built entirely from local materials and hewed out of rock and earth by hand.  First deep wells were dug, or  underground springs redirected, to flow into tunnels that emerge on land and into stone channels containing the streaming water. The waterflow moves across miles of land, as determined by the ancients, entirely by gravity. 

Shafts whose function is to regulate the flow of water are sunk in the channels about every 20 meters.  Today, field irrigation is managed by government-appointed overseers, who monitor which fields receive water, and for how many hours. This is done in some areas by removing covers of brick, stones and sheep fleeces from the openings of the shafts to let the water run in another given direction, then replacing the covers to force the water back.

The Aflaj Irrigation Systems of Oman are ancient water channels from 500 AD located in the regions of Dakhiliyah, Sharqiyah and Batinah. However, they represent a type of irrigation system as old as 5000 years in the region named as Qanat or Kariz as originally named in Persia. This one is in the UAE.

In other falaj,  slab-like barriers are inserted into points built into the channel walls to divert the water, then put back as needed.

Falaj comes from the word aflaj, meaning split, or divided. As the photo above shows, the channels may be split to provide field irrigation on one side, and household water on the other.

Walk through a village in Oman, and you’ll  see pure, channeled water flowing in the streets and between houses. Some channels may be partially covered with slabs of stone placed at regular intervals over the top, to prevent night animals that come to drink from falling in and polluting the water.  

There might even be a bath house for the community, with the water provided by the falaj. In the 14th and 15th centuries, governments whose falaj systems had deteriorated rebuilt the tunnels and overland channels. Recognizing the huge value of the ancient waterways,  today’s Emirati and Omani governments have repaired many and put them back in use. Some areas in Oman have over 50 working falaj.

In the UAE there are seven oases, the largest in Al Ain. The stream rippling and burbling between thriving date palms and water greenery is a beautiful thing to see, and it also irrigates 1.200 acres of land, supplying over 550 farms. 

Community areas were once cleared around the mouths of the channels, where the tribes met to take their share of the crop and hold festivities.  Forts and castles were built around the Al Ain oasis to protect it from marauders, and important archaeological discoveries have been made there. UNESCO declared five of the UAE falaj systems to be heritage sites in 2011. 

The falaj system is said to have originated in ancient Iran early in the first millennium BCE, spreading to China and India.  Tribal laborers known as muqannis hand-built and maintained the water channels and shafts, as their descendants do to this day. 

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While it might look like deserts don’t have soil, they do. It’s just very different from those kinds of soil found anywhere else. Extreme temperatures, very little water and limited plant matter to degrade on the surface make an unusual environment. With little dead plant material to decompose and create a rich layer of organic matter, desert soils are unique. And they need to be protected, finds new research. This is especially important for renewable energy installations being built in the desert, like solar power plants or military installations. For almost ever, people believed that deserts don’t harbor soil or life, but they really do.

It’s just different than what we know and the answers to keep deserts alive are in the pores of the desert soil.

Judith Turk, an assistant professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in the United States, studies the top layer of desert soils, called the vesicular horizon. This surface layer of the soil is common in deserts and contains pores – or tiny holes – of different shapes, called vesicles and vughs.

“These horizons are important because of their role in many processes,” Turk says. “Vesicular horizons determine how much water soaks into the soil and how much runs off. Since they occur in deserts, they control the distribution of the most limiting resource, which is water.”

Vesicular pores are spherical, look a bit like bubbles, and are not connected to each other. Vughs are similar but more irregular in shape, almost like a clump of bubbles that have not fully separated from each other.

Predict impact on floodwater runoff, flash floods

Turk wanted to learn how these horizons form across different desert soils. In their most recent experiment, they chose small plots of the soils and took samples. They then crushed the soil so the formation of pores would have to start from scratch. They checked the porosity of the soils over the course of a year to compare.

“First, we found that infiltration rates were lowered as a result of disturbance,” Turk explains. “This would normally not be surprising, since disturbance compacts the soil, reducing porosity, and breaking up the pore networks that water flows through.

“However, the pores in V horizons are different,” she says. “Most of the pores are not connected with each other and therefore contribute little to permeability of the soil. So, we weren’t sure how disturbance would affect these horizons.”

She adds that what did surprise them was how a soil’s texture determined how well its porosity in this soil layer came back. They assumed that a soil with more silt would be better for vesicle formation but found vesicles formed more rapidly in relatively sandy soils.

“The capacity for vesicular pores to reform within a year after the V horizon is disturbed is something that is interesting,” Turk says. “The post-disturbance V horizons being thinner with smaller pores tells us that what we observed in the undisturbed soils takes time to form.”

It is important to study these soils because semi-arid lands cover about one third of the planet’s land area. Soils with V horizons are often disturbed because populations of cities in arid environments are growing. There is construction of solar and wind farms, and these areas are popular for military exercises.

It’s vital to take the researchers’ findings into account when planning to disturb the soil.

“Many people are surprised to learn that there are interesting soils in the desert,” she says. “When I moved to California for graduate school, I fell in love with the desert lands of the western US. In the desert you can see the land surface and it’s easy to imagine the processes that have built the soil landscapes that we see today.”

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Countries with fossil fuel-dependent economies are making a marked shift towards renewable energy. See Arab loan to fund renewables. Substantial financial investments in solar and wind projects throughout the Middle East and North Africa have gained global recognition as the hydrocarbon market looks to bolster alternative economies.

Despite the recent move to renewable energy, the Arab nations currently invest very little in comparison to the rest of the world. The United States and Europe have invested over $40 billion, respectively. China’s investments exceed $126.6 billion. In comparison, the Middle East and Africa have invested only $10 billion in renewable projects and infrastructure.

In addition to a heightened awareness of the environmental impact of the fossil fuel industry, the main drivers for change are economic. Solar and wind energy can now compete with conventional energy sources due to falling prices. Advances in technology, such as marine desalination, also contribute to the evolving industry.

Experts project global oil consumption to peak in the next 20 years. Motivated by the prospect of economic decline, oil and gas companies in Arab nations are analyzing the growth of the non-oil industry within the energy sector. An increase in domestic energy consumption is also driving the exploration of economical alternatives to the fossil fuel industry. In Saudi Arabia, the demand for domestic energy has increased by 60% in the last 10 years.

Diversification Within the Energy Industry

The potential success of a renewable energy economy hinges on a comprehensive plan that focuses on diversification within the energy economy.  However, the increased investment in renewable projects has not resulted in a decrease in oil production. According to OPEC figures, the oil and gas sector in Saudi Arabia accounts for 50% of the country’s GDP. Thirty percent of the United Arab Emirates’ economy comes from gas and oil, and the industry accounts for 92% of Kuwait’s export revenues. These figures demonstrate that while Arab nations are investing in renewable energy, the transition from an oil-rich economy to a new alternative will not be a linear one.

With a significant dependence on the global economy, the oil and gas industries are paying close attention to new policies, such as a potential carbon tax, and exploring new approaches to a rapidly changing global economy and climate. Investing in renewable energy does not necessarily equal a slowing down of the fossil fuel market. However, it does signal a decisive move toward changing the way people consume energy domestically. If countries can harness alternative energy at home, they can export more oil and gas. 

Companies are exploring and implementing various strategies to see how best to incorporate renewable energy domestically. The company responsible for distributing the majority of gas in Egypt, the Middle East and North Africa, TAQA Arabia, is one example. The company is looking into a system that promotes the use of solar energy during the day, while still relying on traditional energy sources at night.

Investing in a Brighter Future

Geography plays an outsized role in the Arab nations’ decision to invest in renewable energy. Oil economy-dependent countries in northern regions, such as Russia and Canada, will not feel the effects of climate change with the same immediacy as the Middle East. That reality leaves the region in a more vulnerable situation than their competitors, especially as the market faces other challenges in the forthcoming years.

The United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Morocco have the greatest investments in renewable energy. One of the main incentives to move toward an economy with a strong reliance on renewable energy is the creation of new jobs. Diversification both within the energy industry and other disciplines, such as manufacturing or shipping, would increase stability as countries transition away from a fossil-fuel-dominated economy. For example, Morocco has created over 13,000 new jobs by building a market for solar water heaters.

There are also several government-supported projects looking to support renewable energy. For example, the Saudi Industrial Development Fund launched a project titled the Renewable Energy Financing Package, designed to aid in the development and growth of non-oil sectors. It will support not only the potential job market within the renewable energy sector, but also aid complementary technology, such as water storage, that will benefit from the diversity of projects.

One example of corresponding technology in the realm of renewable energy is sustainable water systems, such as desalination through reverse osmosis. Water is an integral piece of economic security for both the fossil fuel and renewable energy industry. Future investments in sustainable water infrastructure are essential to the creation and longevity of renewable systems.

The fossil fuel industry is paying attention to potential policies such as a carbon tax, and are adjusting based on substantial changes to the worldwide oil market in the upcoming years. There has been a noticeable change in tone when oil and gas companies talk about climate change and renewable energy. Particularly throughout the Middle East and North Africa, there is recent transparency regarding non-oil alternatives.

With Aramco now mentioning climate change and looking to lower their greenhouse gas emissions and Petroleum Development Oman’s investment in new projects, the future of renewable energy throughout the region is bright. To establish future economic stability, investing in renewables instead of oil will diversify bolster the economy and lead to more jobs within the energy sector.

—

Emily covers topics in sustainability and renewable energy, and you can read her latest work on her blog, Conservation Folks.

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The first prosthetic leg replacement procedure for an Arabian Tahr has been carried out in Oman by an Omani veterinary team, the first such surgery successfully performed in the Arab World. The procedure is rarely attempted, particularly on a wild animal. 

According to a statement released by the Oman News Agency, the veterinary team of the General Directorate of Veterinary Services at the Royal Court Affairs carried out the procedure on a wounded Tahr after its hind leg was severely fractured, causing irreparable damage to its tissue and blood supply.

Following partial amputation, the animal was fitted with an artificial limb designed to be directly stabilised by remaining leg bone, which allowed for more efficient functionality over time, in the wild. 

Gentle herbivores, Tahrs live in small family groups of two or three animals. The species is diurnal, grazing in the early morning and late afternoon. Although it can survive long periods without drinking if good vegetation is available, in summer it will come down to drink every two or three days.

The Arabian Tahr is classified by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) among its list of endangered animals. The entire world population of Arabian tahr – estimated at fewer than 5,000 animals – live in the mountains of northern Oman and the United Arab Emirates. While some populations may have increased through protection from hunting and poaching, overall it is likely that the species continues to decline.

Kudos to the dedicated doctors who have put their imprint on the survival of this species.

If you are a wild animal veterinarian you might like to know how the procedure was done. Frontiers in Veterinary Science, released a report on how it was done.

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