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The Ministry of Climate Change and Environment (MOCCAE) hosted a workshop at its headquarters in Dubai with international leading experts and the UAE’s university researchers to discuss how to improve the UAE’s Ecological Footprint.
The workshop was organized to engage the academia in the executive team’s effort for understanding how to improve the UAE’s Ecological Footprint while obtaining more accurate, timely estimation of results. Researchers from around 10 national and private universities attended the event, along with the executive team and relevant federal and local authorities. MOCCAE aims to identify a few universities which can collaborate on analyzing the country’s Ecological Footprint trend as well as become part of the global partnership.
In the opening remarks, Eng. Aisha Al Abdooli, the ministry’s Director of Green Development and Environmental Affairs, noted: "Ecological Footprint is a very important measure for us to understand the state of the UAE’s efforts for sustainable development, and we have been working closely with international organizations to improve UAE’s footprint."
"The UAE has rolled out various environmental initiatives which have led to a constant decline of Ecological Footprint. Yet, we need to accelerate this effort further as the country’s 50th anniversary is rapidly approaching. As the methodology of Ecological Footprint is very complex and a lot of data is required to calculate, we would like to have a strong support from university researchers in the next few years."
"We hope this will be a great opportunity for researchers to learn about the methodology and applications directly from the international experts and relate it to the development of future research agenda to support the country’s sustainable development."
The UAE’s Ecological Footprint has been on a constant decline since 2000. In 2017, the Prime Minister’s Office requested MOCCAE to establish a cross-ministerial executive team who sets up a clear target for improving Ecological Footprint and works towards fulfilling the UAE Vision 2021. MOCCAE also adopts the measure as one of the 41 Green Key Performance Indicators to monitor the progress of the country’s transformation towards a green economy as outlined in the UAE Green Agenda 2030.
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