In the sprawling deserts of the United Arab Emirates, there are huge areas of greenery
emerging amidst the golden sands.
This transformation is not some natural phenomenon, it’s by design.
It’s called desert greening and, for all the UAE’s opulence,
this may be its most valuable investment yet.
The United Nations estimated that by 2025, 1.8 billion people will be living with
absolute water scarcity.
If you don't have water for people, animals, plant communities,
as a nation, you will really struggle.
Especially in desert countries increasingly lack of water due to climate change
is resulting in less secure water.
And the Middle East is home to 12 of the 17 world’s most “water stressed countries.”
The UAE receives less than 200 mm of rainfall each year.
To put that into context, London soaked up an average of 1,051 mm of rain in 2022,
while Singapore drenched in a whopping 3,012 mm during the same year.
So, as one can imagine, ensuring enough water for the UAE’s population is a real challenge.
To continue to support its increasing development and growing population, the UAE government
invested more than 20 million dollars in research to start a process called cloud seeding.
Cloud seeding enhances the rain in the cloud.
The main objective of that to increase the storage of groundwater.
It was a direct order from His Highness Sheikh Mansour.
When did this start?
It was in late 2000 and early 2001.
We were partnered with the National Atmospheric Research in the U.S.
The entire Gulf region could face a 50 percent reduction in water availability per capita by 2050.
The UAE has tried to combat desertification, which is land that is no longer productive
because it can't support plant growth.
The Emirate spans over 83,000 square kilometres, and around 80% is desert.
It’s estimated that 75% of our planet's land is already degraded.
These lands have become deserts or are uninhabitable.
About 12 million hectares of land is lost around the world each year
as a direct consequence of drought and desertification.
The World Bank estimates the Emirates has lost
almost 33,000 hectares of land from 2002 to 2018.
The decrease in arable land is primarily due to land degradation.
This impacts over 3 billion people.
And people that live in desert and dry land ecosystems that cover nearly half of the globe,
are particularly vulnerable to the loss of arable land and land degradation.
But in the last 50 years, what was once a large desert and a tranquil fishing port
has evolved into an urban metropolis.
Long before the skyscrapers and bustling cities, the UAE had a history of planting trees
in areas that lacked them, a process called afforestation.
So what we're seeing across the world, especially some of the countries that
have significant desert systems is efforts to green that desert, which means
bringing in trees, other plant communities to increase, as the initiatives say,
the greenness of the deserts.
Take a look at these satellite images of the UAE in the 1980s, and present day.
The country’s late president sought to provide permanent homes for nomadic Bedouins
in the parched desert.
His dream set the stage for a nation's ambitious endeavour and their leaders knew that trees
could help with the fight against desertification.
About two decades ago, the “One Million Trees” initiative was announced by the ruler of Dubai.
The plan was to plant 250 thousand trees every year, in collaboration with the Dubai Police Academy.
It wasn’t long before groves of olive, palms, and the resilient ghafs,
the national tree of the UAE, painted the once-empty land with life.
When you are planting some of those trees, you can dig different holes to capture water
and engineer the landscape so those trees that you're bringing in will be able to survive.
And so that's critically important is that it's not only the types of trees that you're bringing in,
or in the types of plants you're bringing in for these afforestation projects,
but also how you engineer that landscape to be able to receive those plants
and that they are able to survive.
A tree nursery for the “One Million Trees” initiative was created, spanning more than 130,000 square meters.
But challenges loomed large over green dreams.
Behold: 'Mall of the World,' a mega shopping center project.
It was said that Dubai Holding, the investment vehicle of the Emirates ruler,
would require 6.8 billion dollars to build that entertainment district.
Could you guess where they wanted to build this mega project?
None other than the very land the tree nursery once thrived.
And just like that, the project fell through, and thousands of trees withered away and died.
But in January 2015, the UAE Cabinet approved the UAE Green Agenda for 2030,
aimed at building a green economy.
Plants are this miracle worker in terms of pulling carbon dioxide.
So you see a lot of engineering approaches to think about how we pull greenhouse gases
out of the atmosphere, but plants by themselves are one of the best tools that we have.
The UAE is not alone in its quest to green the desert.
Other countries like China have followed the same path, as seen in a desert called Kubuqi
in the country’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.
In 1988, a Chinese company partnered with the Beijing government to build solar farms
and other renewable energy projects.
Three decades later and one third of Kubuqi is green, preventing dunes from encroaching on farms.
The United Nations Environment Programme estimated the Kubuqi project cost 1.8 billion dollars over 50 years.
Beijing is a proponent of cloud-seeding technology.
They used it to manipulate weather to protect farming areas and to guarantee clear skies for key events.
The UAE performs around 1,000 hours of cloud seeding to enhance rainfall in just one year.
And it’s all controlled out of this building, the National Center of Meteorology in Abu Dhabi,
where they track the whole process.
We met with a cloud seeding expert to explain how the seeding process works.
We wait for the forecast when we have a good chance for clouds, we send the aircrafts to that location.
It goes under the cloud, in the first stage of the cloud there is good updraft at that time, it can release all
the salt and, with a good updraft, it goes inside the cloud and start to
condensate and the droplets become bigger and start to rain.
The centre manufactures a salt substance that helps enhance rainfall.
They put them in what they call “flares.”
We also spoke to one of the weather forecasters.
He explains how the operations work.
We alert our pilots and tell them when to be at the airports.
So, as expected, we wait for the clouds to appear on the radar.
We have our pilots talking to us.
Le me know if there's any updrafts in your area.
This is a sample plane here at the National Center of Meteorology,
but the real planes fly out from the runways in Al Ain.
We have around 110 weather stations.
It gives us metrological data every 15 minutes.
The information on the screens tracks wind, speed and direction, while satellite imagery
monitors clouds to track fog and dust.
Anything passing above the country we will see it from the satellite,
especially the clouds.
And this is the map of the UAE.
But is the UAE seeing results from their efforts over the years
to create a greener country?
So we have different ways of either increasing the water or saving the water.
We have desalination, we have using plantation that doesn't take much water.
There are many ways. One of the ways cloud seeding.
Is there any success in terms of more greenery around the UAE because of cloud seeding efforts?
So the UAE is expanding on the agriculture and also we were expending too much before.
We have to do a plantation with the study. Plantation costs a lot of water.
We can control this water and not to use it as a waste.
According to the World Bank, climate-related water scarcity
will cost the region up to 6% of their GDP by 2050.
As we green landscapes, this results in healthier people, not only healthier landscapes.
Greening landscapes impacts the wellbeing, the mental health of people,
the physical health of people in terms of the air that they're breathing.
In a region expected to be most impacted by warming temperatures, the time has never been
more important than now to find alternate ways of maintaining life in the desert.