‘Greening the Emirates’: the modern construction of nature in the United Arab Emirates

Abstract

As part of the project of postcolonial national modernization, the United Arab Emirates has seen the transformation of significant areas of the country’s desert environment into green landscapes, with enormous resources devoted to agricultural development, park landscaping and nature reserves. In addition, recent years have also seen the creation of a number of social institutions dealing with environmental issues. This paper critically considers this dual ‘greening of the emirates’. Analysing the material, cultural and social construction of this green nature, I argue that it must be seen in the context of a shift from a premodern to a modern relationship to nature. However, whilst in part this has meant the use of oil money to import what are seen as Western environmental technologies and ideas, it has also involved the construction of a distinctive Emirati form of modern nature. The paper concludes with a discussion of how this represents a case of the ‘glocal’ geographies of ecological modernization.