There’s an interesting Greenview column in the new Economist about a recent UK court decision, which says that employers may not fire people over their environmentalist attitudes, just as they can’t fire someone over their religion.
Last month Mr Justice Burton stated that anyone holding a “philosophical belief which is based on science as opposed, for example, to religion” should also be protected from discrimination at the workplace.
Writes The Economist about the case: “He (Mr Justice Burton) provided a five-pronged test to shore up the ruling: the belief must be genuinely held; it must be held for a long period of time; it must relate to something of grave importance to humanity; it must reach a certain level of cogency and seriousness; and it must not trample on existing ideas of human rights. By way of example, he said belief in the supremacy of the Jedi knights of “Star Wars” fame would be excluded, but he conceded that allegiance to the doctrines of Marxism or communism might not.”
Of course, it’s not news that environmental issues such as manmade climate change are a question of faith to many. But who would have thought environmentalism would find its way into labour legislation quite so quickly?
Turning the desert fertile is part of the UAE’s national mission statement. Unsurprisingly, the country has acquired a serious chemical-fertilizer habit. Nitrate levels in the groundwater and crops have become a cause for alarm in some regions and so the government has made the wise decision to start backing organic farming methods. But the underlying question remains: can desert farming ever be economically viable - let alone sustainable?
The Samosa just published an article I wrote after visiting an organic farm in Shahama, near Abu Dhabi, this summer. It was an eye-opening experience - one that has made me even more curious about the UAE’s dream of turning the desert green. More to follow on this.
Posted 10 months, 1 week ago at 7:33 am. Add a comment
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) don’t do anything halfheartedly. Superlatives and hyperbole have become a second language to those involved in the many record-breaking projects that are underway in the country.
Now the UAE has embraced sustainability and is pumping billions into research and initiatives to advance green technologies.
Abu Dhabi is the epicentre of the UAE’s gigantic green drive, which came as a suprise to many. After all, the UAE are among the world’s leading oil and gas exporters.
But in the last decade the country’s long-term economic strategy has focused on diversification and the cultivation of non-oil dependent industries such as tourism, media, finance and now, sustainable technologies.
Much of this is due to the legacy of the late President His Highness Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan, who ruled the UAE for more than 30 years and set forth an agenda of religious tolerance, economic reform and protection of the environment.
Masdar City, a living sustainability laboratory currently under construction, is now the centre piece of Abu Dhabi’s environmental strategy. The city will house up to 40,000 residents and employ 50,000 more, but produce no carbon emissions and no waste whatsoever. It will cost US$ 22 billion and is scheduled for completion in 2016. Masdar is the biggest single investment in sustainability to date.
According to Sam Nader of the Masdar Initiative, the project’s aims are „integrating various applications of existing renewable technologies, the cultivation of an innovative academic and business community and the generation of significant intellectual property in order to position Abu Dhabi as a world leader in renewables energy and sustainability.“
Unsurprisingly, the world media have lapped up the story and have bathed the UAE in green limelight.
But some experts have pointed out that initiatives such as Masdar have not yet changed much.
“The numbers must be put into perspective. They are spending welcome billions of dollars on renewables but trillions are still going into climate-changing oil economies. The future is the sun and renewables but there is no time to wait for this revolution,” Tony Juniper, director of Friends of the Earth, told The Guardian.
The 420,000 residents of Abu Dhabi remain among the world’s greatest emittors of greenhouse gases, according to the World Resources Institute.
Posted 1 year, 4 months ago at 1:32 pm. Add a comment
