EXPANSION: The Qatar National Master Plan seeks to manage future expansion of urban infrastructure, and commercial, industrial and private real estate, given projections of continued astronomical rates of population growth.
CANDID: Paul Sillitoe, Professor of Anthropology at Durham University.
Paul Sillitoe, Professor of Anthropology at Durham University, who has just
launched Sustainable Development: An Appraisal from the Gulf Region says
that there’s only so much on this planet to expend, writes Anand Holla
Around five years ago, when Paul Sillitoe came to Doha to teach and research sustainable development at Qatar University (QU), he discovered how literal “starting from scratch” could get. That’s because Sillitoe had to set off from a place a professor would rarely need to; which was to explain what his subject, sustainable development, actually means.
“Talking to my colleagues and my students, one of the first things that became very clear to me was that there was very little understanding of sustainable development here. Most people’s ideas of development were more high-rises and more malls. In fact, I have some very funny stories about what students thought of it,” says Sillitoe, of his three-year-stint as Shell Chair in Sustainable Development at QU, “The challenge was to get sustainable development on the map here.”
Last morning, Sillitoe certainly unveiled a great vehicle to put the issue on the GCC map. The Professor of Anthropology at Durham University launched Sustainable Development: An Appraisal from the Gulf Region, an encyclopedic book he has painstakingly edited, at QU’s Centre for Humanities and Social Science Research.
For the uninitiated, sustainable development is exactly what it sounds like — development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
Offering a wide-ranging introduction to the field of sustainable development, focusing mostly on the Gulf region, the 572-page book combines university faculty and government personnel from the Gulf and the Middle East with colleagues from Europe and North America whose research interests focus on this issue. Packed with analysis on various aspects of sustainability, the book aims to encourage students to ask what the implications are for their region.
“Sometime in 2009, we had a large international, inter-disciplinary conference on sustainable development. Those who participated in it were architects, natural scientists, social scientists, environmentalists, engineers, planners, health professionals, Qatari government officials, industry people, you name it. It’s from there that I got this book idea,” shares Sillitoe, about what is essentially a collection of comprehensive papers on the subject, written by experts.
Sillitoe knows that this book is as crucial for generating awareness and sparking discussions as it is for teachers and students. “There has been absolutely no guide or book on the Gulf region or the Middle East in relation to sustainable development. As a professor, I faced this problem, too, as there was very little that I could refer my students to read which was related to the region,” Sillitoe says.
Featuring a foreword by QU President Sheikha al-Misnad and an introduction by Sillitoe, the book has 20 chapters that deal at length with planning sustainable development, energy and economic issues, environmental issues, urban and health issues, and cultural and social issues. Of these, 10 chapters are focused on Qatar. Using a subvention of QR25,000, Sillitoe says he had to fund the book’s costs out of his pocket.
Such an initiative seems totally understandable considering Sillitoe’s unbridled passion for the subject. In his introduction, Sillitoe highlights how vital the issue is: “Sustainable development has emerged as a prominent issue in the 21st century. Indeed, it is arguably going to be the issue with growing evidence of unsustainable use of the world’s resources, such as its fossil fuel reserves, and related environmental pollution, for instance alarmingly evident in climate-change predictions.”
“The column inches, research resources and teaching time devoted to sustainable development and associated topics the world over since the late 1980s are colossal. They contrast with the position in the Middle East where, until recently, regardless of environmental concerns plain to see with harsh climate and scarcity of water, countries have shown little interest in sustainable development. The goal was economic growth with scant regard to environmental issues. They sought rapid industrialisation and urbanisation, often featuring environmentally unfriendly technology, without apparently considering the negative consequences, such as destruction of natural resources and pollution,” he writes.
However, of late, there is increasing realisation that secure, long-term development cannot be achieved at the expense of the environment, feels Sillitoe. “In terms of population, Qatar is holding way beyond what it could support unsustainably without the oil and gas. It’s just that the oil and gas are bringing in huge revenues, allowing it to afford everything it wants. But now, Qatar’s population and urban development is way beyond what it can support, no matter what it does,” he says, “Qatar Nation Vision 2030 makes it quite clear that sustainability is an important issue.”
Thereby, like Qatar, the region seems to be on what Sillitoe calls “a doubly unsustainable trajectory.” He explains why: “First, in supplying non-renewable oil and gas to the rest of the world to meet current unsustainable global energy demands, worryingly polluting the atmosphere further with CO2-laden gases. Second, in using the enormous revenues it receives from these energy exports to develop large urban conurbations that will prove unsustainable on the region’s resources when non-renewable fossil fuels are exhausted.”
The latter problem is already evident with water supplies dependent on energy-hungry desalination plants and the pumping of groundwater from deep aquifers at rates way beyond natural replenishment, believes Sillitoe.
Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, currently, are holders of two unenviable World records, the book states. They have the largest ecological footprints (indicates our impact on the planet, and tells us the land area needed to provide us with what we consume, and to absorb our waste) and the largest carbon footprints (sum of all emissions of greenhouse gases).
“People in the Gulf must listen to their own values and their culture. People have lived here for many millennia,” says Sillitoe, “In Iraq, people started farming 10,000 years ago. We, in England, were under an ice sheet then. This region has such a long history and a massive cultural heritage. It’s key for people to draw on it all, and not get sucked into the web of technology that the West has developed.”
While Sillitoe is hard-pressed to find a model for sustainable development in the GCC, he hopes for the few upcoming initiatives to take off. “The agricultural department of Qatar’s Ministry of Environment is working on what they call the Sahara System of farming. It involves large glasshouses that use sunrays to evaporate sea water and produce water that can help grow crops. Now, that’s a really sustainable plan,” he says.
As for urban sustainability, the breathless pace of urbanisation, championed by Dubai’s rapid expansion, poses a serious threat to the Gulf region with respect to sustainable development, feels Sillitoe. “The Qatari government, for instance, has invested heavily in drawing up plans to guide future development of Doha,” he writes.
In chapter three, senior environmental planner Khondker Rahman elaborates on how the Qatar National Master Plan seeks to manage future expansion of urban infrastructure, and commercial, industrial and private real estate, given projections of continued astronomical rates of population growth.
“It is an insightful introduction into the planning process. The plan gives policies and strategies to guide urban development sustainably up until 2032 together with the monitoring and evaluation criteria to ensure goals are met,” explains Sillitoe.
Having researched extensively on tropical farming systems and indigenous natural resource management strategies, Sillitoe’s wholesome exploration of sustainability certainly can’t be sidestepped. Despite the direction in which the developed world is heading, Sillitoe prefers to stay an optimist.
“I don’t know what the future has in store for us,” he says, “But following all these capitalist ideas is not a good idea, because, basically, capitalist economics is the reverse of sustainable development. Everything in capitalism is about economic growth. If you have that, then you have a solid economy. However, economic growth is actually about using your resources in order to grow. That’s because we have only so much on this planet to expend.”
