Region

ABU DHABI — With the launch of the Middle East's most advanced marine research vessel “Jaywun”, deployed with state-of-the-art technology to help combat climate change, the Environment Agency – Abu Dhabi (EAD) is on a mission to further strengthen the UAE’s position on the global research map and intensify climate action.

Through a series of projects, initiatives and policies, Abu Dhabi is gearing up to realise sustainable economic development, while simultaneously protecting the emirate’s rich environment and biodiversity.

Environmental preservation tops national agenda

“Since the foundation of the UAE, the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan placed the preservation of the environment and biodiversity at the top of country’s agenda. The environment has always been at the heart of our policies and development process,” Ahmed Al Hashemi, Executive Director, Terrestrial and Marine Biodiversity Sector at EAD, told The Jordan Times in a recent meeting.

 “We have always been keen on striking a balance between economic growth and development and preserving sustainability. Now we are deploying the latest technologies, including the recent launch of the state-of-the-art research vessel, to help us make better-informed decisions to ensure the environment is preserved, while taking into account sustained economic growth,” he added.

Advanced research vessel

Abu Dhabi recently launched the Middle East's most advanced marine research vessel to aid efforts safeguarding marine life in the emirate amid the diverse ramifications of climate change, Al Hashemi said.

The name of the vessel, “Jaywun”, symbolises one of the finest and most valuable types of pearls. The ship will help preserve the emirate’s rich, unique and diverse marine environment and biodiversity, he said.

The vessel, which can accommodate about 30 people, is equipped with the latest research equipment, including six laboratories for studying samples. 

It also includes a remotely-operated submarine, which will operate in the territorial waters of the UAE in the Arabian Gulf and the Sea of Oman, and will allow the agency to complete its research on the marine environment and fish populations in waters over 10m deep.

The agency will also use the Jaywun to monitor and preserve fish stocks and marine biodiversity and help ignite a passion for oceanography and fisheries studies in the Arabian Gulf among young Emirati researchers. 

Freire Shipbuilding Company in Vigo, Spain, developed the vessel under the supervision of the Abu Dhabi Ship Building Company, with the support of a team from EAD.

“The sea is very important for us in Abu Dhabi…The location of the sea is unique and although the Arabian Gulf is the hottest sea in the world, we have a wide diversity of species, including coral, that thrive here in spite of the high salinity and hot water,” Al Hashemi said.

Much of the Arabian Gulf is still unexplored. The research vessel will explore the sea and marine life to come up with solutions to enhance the ecosystem, he noted, adding that the ship is a main initiative in fighting against and adapting to climate change.

“This research vessel will help enhance our national capacities as we are collaborating with top research centres and researchers from across the world. We have already signed several MoUs with many universities to ensure that students are involved and benefit from this experience,” he added.

Banning unsustainable fishing practices

In its efforts to preserve the environment and marine life, the UAE has banned some unsustainable fishing practices which had an impact on marine species, particularly fish stock.

“One of the challenges we faced is the low fish stock. This is why we brought the ship. We had studies in the past based on studies from 1978. We banned some practices, and after that we enhanced the reserve. We noticed a drop in the reserve, and a huge drop in fish reserves in the sea. The fishermen always complained because they used to go far areas and stay longer hours to be able to fish, but this is food security we are talking about,” Al Hashemi added.

“Then we took several firm measures, including banning unsustainable fishing practices that use nets and other traps for the fish locally known as Gargoor,” he noted, adding that following the ban, data showed that fish stocks rebounded.

The coastal and marine areas of Abu Dhabi, located on the southern border of the Arabian Gulf, are considered “a hotspot” for biodiversity, housing various habitats that support a wide range of marine species, including large fish. The agency has worked to improve the condition of deteriorating fish stocks that had been depleted by up to 85 per cent, according to its studies and surveys, he said.

Implementing EAD's guidance in this context helped protect fish stocks, with data showing that Abu Dhabi is on track to achieve its goal of sustainable fisheries by 2030. An improvement has also been achieved in the sustainable fishing index for three consecutive years, rising from 8.9 per cent in 2018 to 62.3 per cent by the end of 2021. The agency will continue working to ensure the recovery of fisheries, while achieving a level of sustainable fishing.

Efforts made by the agency to establish and manage natural reserves through the Sheikh Zayed Protected Area Network, which comprises six marine reserves representing 14 per cent of the emirate’s marine environment, have also contributed to preserving biodiversity in Abu Dhabi.

Drones to plant mangrove seeds

The UAE is also working on adopting and intensifying nature-based solutions.

One project that falls under this strategy is the planting of mangrove seeds using drones, an initiative that Al Hashemi said the emirate will intensify as of this year.

“These trees have been found to play an important role as carbon sinks. In the last 10 years, we have planted more than 15 million mangrove trees and this year, we plan to expand and intensify the implementation of the project,” he added.

Planting mangrove seeds using drones supports the Abu Dhabi Mangrove Initiative, which was announced in February 2021 during Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge’s, landmark visit to the UAE, where he met with Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed, Member of Abu Dhabi Executive Council and Chairman of Abu Dhabi Executive Office, at Jubail Mangrove Park.

This initiative, which is being implemented by EAD with local, regional and international partners, supports Abu Dhabi’s ambitious plans to make the emirate a global hub for mangrove conservation research and innovation as the trees sequester carbon, a key strategy in fighting climate change.

The initiative supports the UAE Ministry of Climate Change and Environment’s target, announced during COP26 in Glasgow in 2021, which unveiled a nationwide plan to plant 100 million mangroves by 2030.

EAD is the first organisation to utilise and plant mangroves on a large-scale, utilising ecological principles enhanced by drones. The planting of one million seeds follows a successful initial phase implemented by EAD in partnership with ENGIE, the global energy company, and Distant Imagery, a drone engineering solutions company.

This initial phase focused on planting mangroves via drones in 2020, with up to a 48 per cent success rate. EAD then scaled up the project, with one million mangroves planted via drones at different locations around Al Mirfa, in Al Dhafra region.

Using drones to plant mangroves has several advantages, as the environmental footprint of the methodology is low since it removes the need for intense labour and sapling transportation. It is also cost-effective, as it reduces the overall price of mangrove planting, eliminates the need for mangrove nurseries and associated costs and facilitates reaching remote and difficult areas. The project is also running a trial on incorporating machine learning for future monitoring phases.

“This project helps preserve the environment and saves efforts and resources and the success rate of the project is on the rise,” he added.

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OCCUPIED JERUSALEM/GAZA CITY — Israel's security cabinet announced on Sunday that it would legalise nine settlements in the occupied West Bank following a series of attacks in East Jerusalem, including one that killed three Israelis.

"In response to the murderous terrorist attacks in Jerusalem, the security Cabinet decided unanimously to authorise nine communities in Judea and Samaria," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said in a statement that included the name Israel uses for the West Bank, Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967.

"These communities have existed for many years; some have existed for decades," it said.

These so-called "wild" settlements were built without authorisation from the Israeli government.

The statement said that a committee will be convened in the coming days to approve the construction of new settlement units in existing communities in Judea and Samaria.

It said the "security Cabinet made a series of additional decisions in the framework of the determined fight against terrorism" including strengthening security forces in Jerusalem.

Netanyahu said earlier Sunday during a meeting of his government he wanted to "strengthen settlements", which are illegal under international law.

More than 475,000 Israelis reside in settlements in the West Bank, where 2.8 million Palestinians live.

Netanyahu also announced that his government wanted to submit legislation to the Knesset [parliament] this week to revoke the Israeli nationality of "terrorists".

The measures apply to Arab Israelis as well as to Palestinians with resident status in East Jerusalem, part of the city occupied by Israel.

This announcement comes amid an outbreak of Israeli-Palestinian violence.

Since the beginning of the year, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has claimed the lives of at least 46 Palestinians, according to an AFP count based on official Palestinian sources.

Meanwhile, Israel struck a Hamas base in Gaza on Monday in response to a rocket fired from the enclave, while one Palestinian died during what the army alleged a West Bank raid targeting suspects.

The latest unrest comes amid a significance escalation in Israeli-Palestinian violence, with dozens killed in recent weeks.

The Palestinian health ministry said Amir Ihab Bustami, 21, was killed in a pre-dawn Israeli army raid in Nablus in the north of the occupied West Bank, the scene of repeated clashes over the past year.

Separately, in Gaza, the occupation army said it had struck before dawn “an underground complex containing raw materials used for the manufacturing of rockets belonging to the Hamas terrorist organisation”.

Ayman Shamalakh, a gas station owner in the coastal territory, told AFP the strikes hit a nearby events hall, causing glass to shatter in the area, and added that “as for the hall, it was completely destroyed”.

Following the Israeli strikes, air raid sirens sounded in communities near the Gaza border, the military said.

JENIN, Palestinian Territories — Israeli forces killed a Palestinian teenager on Sunday in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry said, with the army reporting they came under fire during a raid.

The ministry reported 14-year-old Qusai Radwan Waked died "as a result of being seriously wounded in the abdomen by live fire from the occupation [Israel]" in Jenin, a city in the northern West Bank.

Israeli forces were shot at while they were trying to arrest an alleged Palestinian fighter, while "explosive devices and rocks" were also thrown at them.

"We are aware of the reports regarding a number of armed individuals who got injured during the exchange of fire," an Israeli forces statement said, adding that no troops were hurt.

An AFP photographer saw the teenager's body wrapped in a sheet and being carried on a stretcher.

The latest killing comes as violence flares in the West Bank, which has been occupied by Israel since the 1967 June War.

This year there have been 46 Palestinian fatalities, including attackers and civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official statements.

Nine Israeli civilians and one Ukrainian have been killed over the same period.

Elsewhere in the northern West Bank on Sunday, Palestinian mourners gathered for the funeral of a 27-year-old man shot dead allegedly by an Israeli settler.

Mithkal Suleiman Rayyan was shot in the head Saturday near the village of Qarawat Bani Hassan, where the army reported “heavy clashes between dozens of Palestinians and Israeli civilians”.

Attia Asi, who witnessed the killing, said the shooting happened before soldiers arrived.

“In the beginning it was in the air, then it turned towards the [Palestinian] guys, aiming to kill,” he told AFP at the funeral.

The latest raid in Jenin by Israeli forces led to the arrest of Jebril Zubeidi, who the military said is accused of “terrorist activity against security forces and planning attacks”.

The city’s deputy governor, Kamal Abu Al Rub, said Jebril Zubeidi is the brother of jailed Zakaria Zubeidi, who headed the armed wing of the Fateh movement of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.

Zakaria Zubeidi was the alleged mastermind of a daring prison break in 2021, in which he and five fellow Palestinians escaped a high-security facility in northern Israel before being recaptured.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — At Jerusalem’s Western Wall plaza, a recent excavation has alarmed some heritage specialists who fear the traces of a centuries-old Arab neighbourhood razed by Israel may disappear.

There are no signs on the expansive plaza to recall the history of the Mughrabi neighbourhood, or Moroccan quarter, which was demolished by Israeli forces after they captured East Jerusalem in the 1967 June War.

The area now bustles with tourists and worshippers who cross the stone square to the Western Wall, which marks the holiest site where Jews can pray.

The only indication of its North African heritage is a Moroccan flag, flying discreetly in a nearby private garden.

Last month, excavations which the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) said aimed “to strengthen, stabilise and improve infrastructure” at the site “revealed parts” of the Mughrabi quarter and uncovered the remains of homes.

French historian Vincent Lemire said the discoveries included walls nearly a metre high, traces of paint, a cobbled courtyard and a system to drain rainwater.

“No one expected to discover so many remains of the Mughrabi quarter, so well preserved,” said Lemire, who has authored a book about the neighbourhood’s destruction.

For a brief time, “we could literally walk in the middle of the ancient Mughrabi quarter, in its streets, in its courtyards, in its houses,” said Lemire, who also heads Jerusalem’s French Research Centre.

Within days, AFP journalists saw that some stone remains appeared to have been removed and the area was covered up once more.

 ‘Deeply concerned’ 

The district was initially founded in the 12th century by Saladin, who defeated the Crusader kingdom in Jerusalem.

It was established for Muslim pilgrims from North Africa as it stood below the Al Aqsa Mosque, the third-holiest site in Islam.

The mosque compound is above the Western Wall and is also holy to Jews, who refer to the site as the Temple Mount.

After Israeli forces seized East Jerusalem and its Old City in June 1967, Mughrabi residents were forcibly evicted and the neighbourhood was demolished overnight.

“From previous archaeological activities in the Old City and its surroundings, we are deeply concerned” about the recent findings, said Alon Arad, director of Israeli organisation Emek Shaveh, which fights against the politicisation of archaeology.

He said the IAA’s priority was to create a vast archaeological site which celebrates only the Jewish heritage of Jerusalem.

The IAA has been involved in numerous controversial digs in occupied East Jerusalem, which Israel annexed years after the 1967 war.

Among them are excavations in a Jewish settlement area in the Palestinian neighbourhood of Silwan, just beyond the Old City walls, and tunnels beneath the Western Wall plaza.

The tunnels are now a vast museum displaying ruins dating to the time of the Second Temple, which the Romans destroyed in 70AD, leaving only the Western Wall standing.

The 1996 public opening of the tunnels sparked violent clashes between Israeli security forces and Palestinians that killed more than 80 people.

Palestinians fear their use threatens the foundations of Al Aqsa Mosque.

 ‘Lost forever’ 

Arad accused Israeli authorities of “silencing any other heritage or cultural affiliation” and of using excavations for the “Judaisation” of the Old City.

The IAA disputed Arad’s claims as baseless, telling AFP that it works on “all the antiquities of Jerusalem, from all the cultures and religions that lived in the holy city”.

The remains discovered last month are too recent to be considered antiquities, the IAA said, but the findings were documented and details would be published in a scientific journal.

The body did not respond to an AFP question about a potential public display.

Morocco, which revived relations with Israel in 2020, “seeks to promote ‘intangible Judeo-Moroccan heritage’,” said Ali Bouabid from the North African country’s Abderrahim Bouabid foundation think tank.

“It’s a strange contrast: When one celebrates diversity loudly, while in silence the other organises its disappearance,” Bouabid told AFP.

Visitors to the plaza are invited to pray at the Western Wall or explore the tunnels, where they can “touch the true stones which recount the history of the Jewish nation”.

There is no mention of the residents who lived for centuries in the site’s shadow.

But the recent dig also unearthed everyday objects such as toys, tools and cooking utensils.

Exhibiting such items could serve as a testament to the “ordinary history of this extraordinary neighbourhood”, said Lemire, suggesting some building remains could be “preserved, displayed and highlighted in a tourist route”.

“If these final remnants are destroyed in the end, the material traces of this history will be lost forever,” he said.

JABLEH, Syria — Syria's coastal city of Jableh was largely spared the worst of war but a massive quake has now joined it in misery with the rest of the battle-scarred country.

With flattened buildings, civilians trapped under rubble and residents forced to flee their homes, Jableh is no longer sheltered from the kind of devastation that has long plagued neighbouring regions.

"It's the first catastrophe of its kind in Jableh," said Abdulhadi Al-Ajji. "I am 52 years old and I have never gone through anything like this in my life."

The father of four, whose cracked cinderblock home overlooks a building in ruins, said his city had always been a safe haven even at the height of Syria's nearly 12-year war.

When rebels expanded their foothold across the country, Jableh sent men to fight, but never saw major battle on its own soil.

"Even my mother who is 80 years old told me nothing like this has ever happened here," said Ajji, a carpenter.

Jableh is located in Latakia, a province largely under government control and one of the worst impacted by the tremor.

Monday's 7.8-magnitude quake that struck near the Turkish city of Gaziantep, about 40 kilometres from the Syrian border, killed more than 24,000 people, including at least 3,553 in Syria.

In Latakia province alone, the quake killed at least 623 people, and the death toll continues to mount minute by minute, according to Alaa Moubarak, head of Jableh's civil defence.

'Nowhere to go' 

Jableh's residential neighbourhoods have long been dilapidated, though they have been spared the scars emblematic of the country's years of battle.

But more than 50 apartment blocks in the city and its environs have completely collapsed because of the quake, and at least 50 others are at risk of falling, Moubarak said.

An estimated 4,000 to 5,000 residents have been forced from their homes, taking shelter in mosques, hospitals and the city's stadium, he added.

On Friday, a rescue force from the United Arab Emirates operated on a completely flattened building that initially split in half when the quake hit.

The first section fell immediately, with the remaining part following shortly after. At least 15 people were killed.

Imad Al Daou barely made it out alive with his wife and two children when the floor crumbled beneath their feet.

“This is the first catastrophe of its kind that I ever experienced in my life,” said the 42-year-old merchant.

“They had to pull me out using an excavator.”

Jableh is part of a Syrian coastal region that includes the government strongholds of Latakia and Tartus, too, largely spared the impact of the conflict.

The area is known as a recruiting ground for President Bashar Assad’s forces, with much of his military hailing from the area.

Assad’s Russian allies also have major stakes in the region. The Russian airbase in Hmeimim is 5 kilometres from Jableh, and the naval port of Tartus lies roughly 60 kilometres to the south.

‘Tent on the street’ 

Syria’s war, which started in 2011 with a brutal crackdown on anti-regime protests, has killed nearly half a million people and has forced at least half of the country’s pre-war population from their homes.

The vast majority of the country has seen major population movement due to fighting.

But the residents of Jableh were not forced to flee their homes until the quake hit.

In the city’s Al Fayed neighbourhood, dozens of evacuees huddled in a mosque-turned-shelter waiting to hear if their homes are safe for return.

With nowhere else to go, they have been living there for five days, barely able to afford food, let alone temporary accommodation.

“I’ll pitch a tent on the street” if I can’t go back home, said Fatima Hammoud.

The 42-year-old mother of three fled her damaged home with her husband and children on Monday, fearing the roof would cave in over their heads.

“I can’t sleep. Anytime I feel a minor movement I remember all the shaking,” she said.

Sprawled on the floor nearby, Halima Al Aswad also said she has been stalked by dread since the disaster.

“Where will I go? The only safe place is the mosque,” the mother of three said, fighting back tears.

“Wherever is safe, I will go there.”