Vital to dugongs, sea turtles, fish nurseries and carbon storage, seagrass meadows are among the ocean’s most critical – and at the same time most overlooked – ecosystems. Yet, they are disappearing at alarming rates around the world. Scientists from across the region gathered in Abu Dhabi for the first Arabian Seagrass Workshop last week, […]
Developing countries including most Middle East states have yet to use a new $300 billion climate fund to draw up plans to go green – blaming global turmoil and choosing to “wait for others” to go first, The National has been told. Armed with the $300 billion pledge, countries had a February deadline to reveal how they would help tackle global warming. […]
The UAE has hosted the World Bank’s Global Flaring and Methane Reduction (GMFR) Partnership meeting as part of a global effort to drive down waste that could otherwise be converted to energy. The World Bank estimates that billions of cubic metres of gas are being released into the air annually due to flaring. This is […]
Investigations are ongoing into what went wrong with the electricity system, which impacted some 60 million people. Spain and Portugal are still reeling from the largest power cut in recent European history, which struck just after midday on Monday. With power supplies mostly back to normal, attention is laser-focused on what caused the incident. Speculation […]
The UAE has entered an unusually intense, early heatwave, with temperatures already climbing past 44°C in recent days – a sweltering sign of what experts warn will be a hotter, longer summer. Dr Ahmed Habib at the National Centre of Meteorology told The National that the country is currently gripped by a thermal low pressure system, […]
As evidence continues to pour in showing that climate change’s impacts disproportionately affect disadvantaged communities around the globe, so, too, do stories showing that these communities can also pay outsized costs to implement climate solutions. Yet, in examining the available body of data and literature detailing how different countries have rolled out climate change mitigation […]
Natural geological structures called salt domes in Abu Dhabi could play a leading role in the UAE’s energy transition, new research suggests. These structures of sedimentary rocks, formed where a large mass of salt has been forced upwards, often forming traps for oil or natural gas, are of interest to engineers who are concerned with the storage of hydrogen generated by renewable […]
Dubai residents are being invited to have their mobile phones at the ready to join an international effort to document urban wildlife and deepen understanding of biodiversity. The annual City Nature Challenge got under way on Friday, with nature-lovers from hundreds of cities invited to photograph and record wild plants, animals and fungi using the iNaturalist […]
Dr Marwa Maziad is a professor of International Relations and Comparative Civil-Military relations at the University of Maryland A decade ago, I had the opportunity to be among the first Arctic Fellows in the University of Washington’s nascent Arctic Studies programme. This allowed me to explore connections few were considering at the time – such […]
Scientists warn that this could be “something that’s completely changing the face of our planet”. Harmful bleaching of the world’s coral has grown to include 84 per cent of the ocean’s reefs. It is the most intense event of its kind in recorded history, the International Coral Reef Initiative announced Wednesday. It’s the fourth global bleaching […]
