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“We have seen what has been going on and we feel horrified,” said Professor Kirkham
in an email. “Unfortunately, recent dredging and infill of the lagoons, road building, pipe
laying and other civil engineering projects are rapidly and irrevocably changing both the
lagoon and groundwater salinities and destroying this coastal area.”
The two scientists believe that “a carefully preserved part of the coastline and its ad-
jacent sabkha plain would undoubtedly attract considerable attention from both visiting
scientists and educated members of the public especially if it is backed up by a good mu-
seum display explaining the coastline, its history of development, and its relevance to the
petroleum industry.
“However, time is short and the whole unique area will soon be lost to the world unless
some action is taken very soon.”
The speakers at the Green Tourism conference were captains of business and well
versed in the high cost of tourism to the natural world all around them. Richard Riley, the
CEO of Abu Dhabi National Hotels, said that tourism is “exceptionally heavy on resources
and development” and, as a result, these industry leaders “have a role in the protection
of biodiversity.” His solution, though, wasn't close to what environmentalists believe is ne-
cessary. Riley's answer was to train his employees to reduce energy use, and reduce the
impact of tourism on climate change. Not particularly radical, especially for a country that
is overwhelmed by water bottles discarded by the millions.
Richard F. Smith, an engineer and chair of carbon-critical buildings for the Atkins
Group, an engineering and design firm in the UAE, was not so timid. He told his peers
that they had to get serious. The designer of the technological breakthroughs for the Burj
Al Arab Hotel, Smith said that only 10 percent of the tourism industry is committed to car-
bon reduction.
“If the tourism industry were a country, it would be the fifth biggest carbon emitter in
the world,” he said.
No one disputed that astonishing figure.
“The learning curve is very steep and the needs of the future are always under assault
from the pressures of today,” he said before recommending serious changes that included
reducing travel itself—the ultimate heresy in the industry.
“A sea change in our behavior has to come,” he said, suggesting fewer vacations, travel
closer to home, more video conferences, perhaps government regulation of travel. No one
else at the conference recommended curtailing travel and tourism; several said it wouldn't
be necessary. Smith turned out to be something like the skunk at the picnic.
It was left to Ralf Stahl to mention the basic issue of all that water being used for tour-
ism in the middle of the desert. His topic was artificial landscapes, like golf courses. The
UAE has over a dozen championship golf courses, and Dubai has become an unlikely
“golf destination” in one of the world's driest regions. To water just one of those expanses
of green grass requires the equivalent of the water consumed in one year by a city of 12,000
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