The Infinity of Water: Climate Change Adaptation in the Arabian Peninsula
I am indebted to Eric Klinenberg for his engagement with various versions of this piece and to Stephen Twilley and Tim Neff for their editorial assistance. Sarah El-Kazaz, Bridget Guarasci, and Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins read an earlier draft and made helpful comments. Wenner Gren Foundation, Cornell University, Rice University, and the ACLS Foundation provided funding for research. Finally, I thank my interlocutors in Abu Dhabi and elsewhere for taking the time to share their perspectives on climate change. 28:2 doi 10.1215/08992363-3427463 Copyright 2016 by Duke University Press Published by Duke University Press oil-rich nations articulate and act upon environmental problems.1 I argue that climate change adaptation projects in the Arabian Peninsula are often attempts at reframing water-related challenges that are already present, regardless of the effects of climate change; for instance, the groundwater sources in the UAE will be destroyed not necessarily due to the predicted impacts of climate change but because they will soon be sucked dry. These challenges are born of not just environmental but also social, political, and economic conditions, such as high levels of per capita water consumption or increasing population, which receive less attention from policy makers. In other words, in the Arabian Peninsula climate change adaptation is about water, while water is not necessarily about climate change adaptation. In this article, I show how the UAE government advances a view that I call the "infinity of water," by relying on technological solutions, particularly desalination, the process of removing salt and other minerals from seawater. The UAE (along with Kuwait, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Singapore) suffers from absolute water scarcity, which means that it has an annual renewable water capacity of less than five hundred cubic meters per capita, a rate that worsens every year due to increasing population levels (Baba et al. 2011: 39).2...