Desert Snow Skiing and Manmade Islands: Unsustainable Tourism in the UAE

By Hunter Collins | May 10th, 2021

Be honest. When you’re on vacation, do you ever think once about the environmental, economic, and social implications that your travel activities have on your vacation destination? If you’re like most tourists, the answer to that question is most likely a resounding no. Vacation is meant to be a rejuvenating escape from the troubles of our daily lives, so why should we ruin our experience by worrying about the impacts that our travel has on the environment and the local host community? The impending environmental crisis threatening the habitability of our planet signals that we probably should start doing so.

There are few places where understanding the relationship between tourism and the environment is more critical than the United Arab Emirates (UAE). This small country on the Persian Gulf comprised of seven Islamic kingdoms has experienced unprecedented economic growth within the space of just half a century largely due to the country’s endowment of lucrative hydrocarbon resources. Since its independence in 1971, the UAE’s economy has grown by 331%; it’s now the second largest economy in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). However, despite its economic success, the country’s arid environment makes it particularly susceptible to the effects of climate change and environmental degradation, like water insecurity and rising sea levels. To diversify its economy away from fossil fuels, the UAE has set about encouraging tourism to sustain economic growth and sidestep the environmental downsides of the fossil fuel industry. However, as I’ll try to demonstrate with this post, the belief that tourism, especially the luxury tourism that characterizes most of the UAE’s tourism industry, is a low-impact economic alternative to high-impact industries like fossil fuel extraction is misleading. There’s more of trade-off between economic growth and environmental impact associated with the tourism industry than most people realize.

**The city of Dubai as seen aerially in 1990 and 2017. The city’s rapid and widespread developmental expansion is evident.**

With this misleading belief driving touristic development, the country’s efforts to increase tourism have been fruitful; the travel industry in the UAE is booming. The country has experienced steady growth in international arrivals, welcoming approximately 16.7 million international visitors in 2019. The UAE is currently the second most visited country in the Middle East, and Dubai is one of the world’s most popular travel destinations. Tourists are increasingly attracted to the UAE because of the modern convenience associated with its developed infrastructure, its stable political system, its tropical climate, and its accessibility. The country is not only open to western tourists, unlike some other Islamic states, but the country’s superior transportation infrastructure enables seamless travel. Tourism in the UAE is overwhelmingly concentrated in the cities of Dubai and Abu Dhabi, the country’s most populous urban centers (66% of the tourism industry in the UAE is concentrated in the Emirate of Dubai and 16% in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi); because of this, I’ll mostly focus on these two tourist destinations in the rest of this post.

Money Matters: Economic Considerations of UAE Tourism

The economic importance of the UAE tourism industry almost goes without saying. The country’s economy, like many of the other economies in the region, depends heavily on the fossil fuel industry; the UAE has the 6^th largest oil reserves and the 7^th largest natural gas reserves in the world. Unlike other countries in the region however, the focus on tourism in the UAE has significantly lessened the country’s dependence on fossil fuel production, an industry well known for its overly large environmental impact, as its main source of economic prosperity. The UAE has effectively used its hydrocarbon wealth to advance sustainable development and diversify its economy. The country currently has the most diversified economy in the GCC, and the country’s successful economic growth model, which stresses tourism as a driver of growth, provides a proven template for developing countries to follow. The tourism industry is now an integral part of the UAE’s overall economy; in 2017, the industry contributed 628,500 jobs to the UAE labor market which accounted for 10.4% of total employment. And guess what, UAE tourism is only expected to provide more jobs in the years to come. Tourism’s overall contribution to the country’s GDP increased from 4.2% in 2000 to 10.9% ($47.4 Billion USD) of total GDP in 2019. The total revenue from international tourism in the UAE in 2019 was estimated at $21.8 Billion USD. Tourism is also a primary driving force of continuing rapid development (infrastructure improvement, increased quality of life, etc.) in the UAE which carries positive economic implications in and of itself. The seemingly unlimited economic benefit of tourism makes it easy to see why many, including the industry’s stakeholders in the UAE, are reluctant to fully consider the industry’s indisputable contribution to environmental problems.

Increasing tourist traffic has the potential to unalterably impact the precarious environmental situation facing the country; money alone can’t stop the approaching environmental crisis.

The fact that the UAE is actively diversifying away from fossil fuels through tourism seems promising from an environmental standpoint; tourism surely can’t be as environmentally harmful as fossil fuel production—can it? Contrary to what we might expect, developing the tourism industry in a particular country has been shown to have little effect on the net greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from that country (Lenzen et al). Why is this? Tourism is a high consumption economic sector: the industry requires vast amounts of water, energy, and other resources which disrupts the environmental balance of the host country and exacerbates existing environmental issues. Luxury tourism in the UAE, with its emphasis on shopping and other urban leisure experiences, is characterized by consumption and extravagance. Tourism might not be the economic godsend that it’s sometimes made out to be. Despite the UAE’s wealth, which enables the Emirati government to better address environmental concerns, increasing tourist traffic has the potential to unalterably impact the precarious environmental situation facing the country; money alone can’t stop the approaching environmental crisis. Economic growth is essential to the UAE’s overall wellbeing (including environmental wellbeing), but can tourism-induced economic growth be reconciled with the industry’s negative environmental impacts?

Waste and Damaging Development: Tourism’s Contribution to Pollution and Ecosystem Disruption in the UAE

One of the most obvious environmental consequences of tourism in the UAE is its role in increasing environmental pollution. The industry causes all different types of pollution including air, water, ground, noise, and visual pollution. Tourists who visit the UAE are exceedingly more wasteful than the local population, and their activities are usually characterized by wasteful excess. As a basic example of pollution arising from tourism, consider the GHG emissions from tourist transportation, one of the most fundamental tourism activities—just think about all the planes and busses used to get tourists to where they’re going. Dubai International Airport (DBX) is the world’s busiest airport in terms of passenger traffic. There were approximately 418,000 flights from DBX in 2016 which, given that jet fuel combustion is one of the leading contributors of GHG emissions, is worrying to say the least. Also, cruise ships, one of the quintessential modes of tourism, have a far less than stellar environmental track record; passenger cruise ships produce 21,000 gallons of sewage, one ton of solid refuse, 170,000 gallons of wastewater, and 8,500 plastic water bottles per day on average. To put this in the context of the UAE tourism industry, Port Rashid near Dubai is the leading cruise ship destination in the Middle East. The wastefulness associated with irresponsible tourism in the UAE strains the country’s waste management system which, although highly advanced, is already stressed due to rapid urbanization (90% of the country’s population is urban). Pollution from tourism certainly has the potential to inflict long-term environmental damage.

One specific example of the negative environmental effects of UAE tourism can be seen with the coastal erosion and marine ecosystem disruption caused by the development of Dubai’s artificial Islands. Prompted by a desire to both capitalize on and sustain increasing tourism in Dubai, developers, along with the government of Dubai, planned several large-scale artificial archipelagos in the early 2000s directly off the coast of the city. Palm Jumeirah, which measures 2.21 square miles in land area, is the only island cluster that’s fully developed as of now. The archipelago, which is shaped like a palm tree, is packed full of private residences, luxury hotels, and tourist attractions including multiple amusement parks; it seems like an understatement to say that the total amount of water and energy required by this island community is immense. The island clusters of Palm Jebel Ali and The World have been constructed but have yet to be developed, and many more manmade island projects are still in the works (like the Deira Islands or The Dubai Waterfront, which is expected to be the largest manmade development in the world). A whopping 95 million cubic meters of sand and 7 million tons of rock were used in the construction of Palm Jumeirah alone which is striking considering it is the smallest of the planned island clusters.

**A barge “rainbows” dredged sand during the construction of Dubai’s artificial islands**

**Planned future developments on Dubai’s coastline**

Along with all the marine life that is literally buried (asphyxiated) as sand is dredged from the sea floor and redistributed, island construction at this scale also significantly increases fine sediment suspension. This has been shown to drastically reduce coral reef growth along with the overall coral population. Fine sediment suspension allows less light to reach the seafloor which is detrimental for both sea plants and bottom feeders. The island developers have tried to rectify their negative impact on the coral reef habitat by implementing artificial coral reefs, but the effectiveness of these manmade reefs is still uncertain. Increased fine sediment suspension has also been shown to increase the concentration of Hydrogen Sulfide, a toxic chemical, in seawater. This major marine habitat disruption (produced almost directly by touristic development) carries some far-reaching consequences for the Persian Gulf as a whole; large disturbances in the food chain, like that caused by artificial island construction in Dubai, have the potential to derail entire ecological systems. But that’s not all. Island construction has led to increased coastal erosion and altered shoreline patterns which threatens both the islands as well as seafront development on the mainland. Only time will tell of the full effect of Dubai’s manmade islands on the fragile aquatic ecosystems of the Persian Gulf as well as coastal human settlement in the UAE.

Water Woes: Tourism’s Exacerbation of Existing Water Issues in the UAE

The UAE, like many other Middle Eastern countries, is currently facing an imminent water resource crisis; decreasing rainfall due to climate change and overextraction of groundwater have a major negative effect on the UAE’s overall water security. A dwindling natural water supply along with abjectly unsustainable water demand are steering the country towards environmental disaster. The UAE currently receives the 5^th lowest average annual rainfall in the world at 78 mm, and the country’s water withdrawal rate exceeds more than 200 times its renewable water resources (aquifers are not considered renewable). The UAE is currently considered the 10^th most water-stressed country in the world.

Tourism in the UAE contributes greatly to unsustainable water demand which is one of the primary determinants of water scarcity. On average, tourists use more water than local residents, and tourism infrastructure (hotels, landscaping, tourist sites, etc.) tends to be characterized by extremely high water and energy consumption rates. The UAE has one of the highest per capita water usage rates in the world at around 200 gallons per person per day. In Dubai specifically, an increase of 500 mL of potable water per person per day is attributable to tourists alone. Nothing better represents the industry’s unrestrained water consumption than the numerous large-scale water parks in the UAE that attract millions of visitors annually. For a country threatened by severe water insecurity, the massive Aquaventure Waterpark, which uses close to 5 million gallons of water per day, seems out of place. Tourism also encourages the widespread development of ostentatious urban green spaces with little water conservation principles in mind. These unsustainable green spaces are frequently deployed in urban landscape design (especially in Dubai and Abu Dhabi) to meet tourists’ expectations for lush, “oasis-like” urban environments even though much of the UAE has a natural desert landscape. These green spaces seek to provide a “natural” escape from urban living, but the reality is that these overwatered and unsustainably landscaped parks are not at all natural in the context of the country’s environment.

The Aquaventure Waterpark is part of the Atlantis Resort Complex, a 1,548-room resort located on Palm Jumeirah in Dubai. The waterpark attracts 1.4 million visitors per year and is considered among the largest waterparks in the world.

**Corniche Park in Abu Dhabi. Instead of embracing the UAE’s desert environment, urban developers draw from clearly inappropriate models for urban natural spaces.**

The UAE’s water problems, which are compounded by tourism, are definitely troubling, but (unsurprisingly) they don’t stop there. Fortunately for the UAE though, its wealth allows the country to supplement its water supply through expensive “manufactured water” sources like seawater desalination and wastewater reclamation. Unfortunately however, these costly water sources come with some significant environmental impacts of their own. Desalination, which provides 37% of the UAE’s total water supply and most of the country’s potable water, requires an exceedingly large energy input. With only around 5.74% of the UAE’s total energy production coming from clean energy sources, we can be pretty sure that most of the energy used for desalination comes from natural gas combustion which releases vast amounts of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. As tourism increases, water demand increases which leads to increased desalination production; this ultimately causes increased GHG emissions, and the effect of carbon emissions on the environment pretty much goes without saying. On top of it all, hot brine, a byproduct of the desalination process, is usually dumped back into the Persian Gulf; this causes increased seawater salinity and higher seawater temperatures which are both extremely harmful to the coastal marine environment.

The Carbon Footprint of Tourism in the UAE and Its Impact on Global Climate Change

Tourism is an energy-intensive economic sector. I’m sure it’s not surprising for anybody when I say that large amounts of electricity are needed for hotels, restaurants, retail stores, and touristic activities. As we saw with desalination, tourism contributes greatly to rising energy consumption in the UAE which leads to more GHG emissions. This is all in addition to the more direct sources of carbon emissions from tourism like touristic transportation (remember DBX?). Globally, tourism accounts for about 8% of global carbon emissions alone, and, on a country-by-country basis, it has been shown that tourism’s carbon footprint increases with tourist affluence. This is bad news for the UAE which tends to attract wealthy tourists seeking luxury getaways. Energy consumption in the UAE has doubled in the past 10 years, and the country’s overall energy usage is only expected to increase as the travel industry grows. The whole point of the matter is that tourism leads to increased GHG emissions which are the leading cause of global climate change, and I’m sure we’re all well aware by now that climate change threatens to irreversibly alter our planet’s natural environment for the worse.

Ski Dubai is one specific example that highlights the massive energy consumption associated with tourism in the UAE. Ski Dubai is a 22,500 square meter indoor snow skiing facility located within the Mall of the Emirates in Dubai. Yep, you heard me, who would have thought you could snow ski in a place with an average annual temperature of around 85 degrees Fahrenheit? This unique tourist attraction receives more than 750,000 annual visitors, and 30 tons of artificial snow are produced each day. The ambient temperature is kept right around 30 degrees Fahrenheit. The extensive refrigeration and snow production at Ski Dubai requires around 1000 MWh of electricity per year. Assuming all the electricity used by Ski Dubai is generated through natural gas combustion (which isn’t far from the truth), the indoor ski resort contributes approximately 500 tons of GHG emissions per year which is equivalent to the resulting GHG emissions from 900 round trip commercial flights from Dubai to Germany (Shahbaz et al).

With tourism’s immense energy consumption in mind, the industry can be viewed as self-destructive in a sense. Since tourism has been shown to play a definite role in driving climate change, touristic activities are literally contributing to the deterioration of the natural environment on which the industry’s viability is based. There could quite possibly come a day when rising sea levels in the Persian Gulf threaten coastal development in the UAE or insufficient water supply deters tourist arrivals. It’s somewhat ironic that the very activities that constitute the tourism industry, if unchecked, have the potential to disrupt the industry itself.

UAE’s tourism industry is complex, and it’s difficult to weigh the industry’s economic potential with its definite contribution to environmental degradation and climate change. One thing is for certain though:

Irresponsible tourism, or tourism with little to no regard for reducing its impacts, is environmentally unsustainable and needs to be re-envisioned—especially in countries, like the UAE where the environmental balance is already fragile.

What Can Be Done?

Behind tourism’s negative environmental effects is the fact that tourists don’t have to live with the immediate ramifications of their actions on the local environment because they don’t permanently reside there. There’s little incentive for tourists to practice environmental stewardship, so local residents are left to deal with tourism’s harmful impacts. Many of the tourists who come to the UAE just aren’t mindful of the heightened environmental vulnerability of the country, and their unsustainable activities reflect this disregard. And while the UAE is taking measures to lessen tourism’s contribution to environmental degradation such as strongly emphasizing sustainable development strategies, tourism’s rapid growth is making it exceptionally difficult for the country to sustainably accommodate the industry.

Another dimension of tourism’s overall impact is the industry’s negative sociocultural consequences. Chief among them is cultural erosion which threatens Emirati heritage. Cultural erosion occurs when local cultural identity fades as touristic lifestyles replace traditional lifestyles and customs. Especially in a country like the UAE, where expatriate residents outnumber natural-born citizens (Emiratis), great care must be taken to preserve and foster local cultural heritage.

It’s unclear whether the UAE government truly recognizes the destructive potential of tourism. The country’s visionary future goals reflect a desire to develop sustainably and ameliorate the tourism industry’s negative impacts, but these goals are all framed in the context of economic development. This demonstrates that the economy is still the number one priority for the UAE. Maybe in the eyes of the Emirati government, the industry’s immense economic potential really does eclipse the environmental and social considerations of tourism activity. And we have to wonder, is this rightly so? Economic health is so tied up with the state of the natural environment that it’s likely that the environmental wellbeing of the UAE depends on the strength of the economy. For example, the water crises in the UAE would be tremendously worse if there wasn’t enough money for desalination. This relationship becomes paradoxical when we remember that the very industries that contribute the most to the UAE economy, like tourism, are some of the most environmentally destructive; both curbing tourism and continuing to encourage tourism can be seen as environmentally problematic when viewed from this angle.

Tourism in the UAE allows outsiders to experience the country in a way that just can’t be done on the internet; a great degree of cultural understanding would be lost if travel in the UAE was limited.

It seems hopeless, but there’s really only one question left to ask; can anything be done about tourism in the UAE? We’ve seen that the industry has some serious downsides, but the UAE obviously can’t just abolish tourism. Aside from the industry’s immense and necessary economic contribution, tourism in the UAE allows outsiders to experience the country in a way that just can’t be done on the internet; a great degree of cultural understanding would be lost if travel in the UAE was limited. With tourism’s overall significance in mind, encouraging sustainable tourism seems like the best way to mitigate the detrimental environmental and cultural effects of tourism in the UAE without sacrificing the industry’s important benefits.

The International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) defines sustainable tourism as referring to “a level of tourism activity that can be maintained over the long term because it results in a net benefit for the social, economic, natural, and cultural environments of the area in which it takes place”. Ecotourism and heritage tourism are two classes of tourism that fall within the sustainable tourism umbrella category. Ecotourism is nature-based travel with minimal environmental impact while heritage tourism refers to travel that centers around experiencing the authentic cultural heritage of the destination. The UAE should focus more on encouraging responsible tourism in place of the luxury urban tourism that the country has been promoting in order to counteract tourism’s damaging effects without forfeiting its transformative economic benefits. There’s certainly no shortage of natural beauty in the UAE with its stunning desert landscapes, lush oases, and awe-inspiring mountain ranges. The country’s many cultural heritage sites, like the Al Ain Oasis in Abu Dhabi or the Al Bidya Mosque in Fujairah, invite tourists to enrich their travel experience by immersing themselves in the rich history of the region as well as Emirati culture. Spending a day exploring a vast expanse of natural sand dunes or learning about Emirati heritage at the Jebel Hafit Tombs is far less impactful than spending a day skiing and shopping at the Mall of the Emirates in Dubai. And as an additional environmental benefit, greater emphasis on ecotourism and heritage tourism might lead to a more even distribution of tourism across the country instead of its current concentration in the country’s coastal metropolises. Responsible tourism won’t eliminate tourism’s environmental and social impact in the UAE, but it should help reduce the industry’s destructive potential.

**Rub’ al Khali Desert, Abu Dhabi. The extraordinary natural landscapes of the UAE definitely have the potential to attract more ecotourists.**

**Jebel Hafit Tombs in eastern Abu Dhabi near Oman. These hive-shaped stone tombs date back to the bronze age (3200-2600 BCE).**

There you have it. While tourism is hugely beneficial for both the UAE (economic benefit) and tourists who visit the country (benefit of a broadened worldview), the negative ramifications of touristic activities are far-reaching and, if unchecked, could lead to deterioration of the country’s already fragile environmental situation. And this complex touristic relationship is not at all unique to the UAE. Travel should be a fun and exciting experience that bridges the gap between differing global perspectives, but we, as future tourists ourselves, can’t forget about the industry’s impact. So next time you’re on vacation, whether in Dubai or elsewhere, stop a while and think about how your leisure activities might affect the economic, social, and environmental circumstances of your destination. Depending on your answer, consider altering your travel plans to reflect an increased understanding of personal responsibility. Do that, and I promise, not only will you make a difference in counteracting tourism’s negative consequences, but your travel experience will be much more meaningful.

Hunter Collins is an undergraduate student at Emory University in Atlanta, GA. He’s originally from Atlanta, and he doesn’t really know what he wants to study yet. He enjoys traveling, but, after writing this blog post and taking MESAS 270, he’ll make sure that his future travels reflect environmental and cultural responsibility. He’s never been to the UAE or the Middle East for that matter, but he would certainly like to visit one day.

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