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Abu Dhabi Water Declaration Calls For Adoption Of Modern Farming Technologies |
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The GCC needs to take serious, prompt steps towards a comprehensive, long-term strategy on water, the Abu Dhabi Declaration recommended. Issued by the 31st GCC Summit, the Declaration stressed the importance of linking between the guarantee of water security and diversification of energy and food security sources as vital prerequisite and key strategic priority for the future of the GCC states. The UAE confirms the importance of water sector to the GCC and the need for designing a forward-looking strategy taking into consideration the three pillars of sustainable development. Recognising that the GCC member states are now producing about 50 per cent of the world’s desalinated water to fulfill demand of population for development, and acknowledging that the desalination process needs huge sources of energy, the Declaration called on that strategy to consider all relevant issues especially possible impact of climate change on water resources, rationalisation of water consumption in different development sectors, reciprocal bearings between the agriculture and water sectors and potential effects for desalination operations and activities on the quality of sea water and living creatures and on climate change. The Declaration recommended adoption of serious and competent approach towards environmental performance indices and carbon footprint index for improving the GCC profile in the domains of water and energy. ’’There is a need for national or regional standards to control increase in carbon footprint in the power, water and households sectors,’’ the Declaration stressed but called for encouraging efforts diversification of the energy sources mix, supporting research and development in renewable energy and water production and updating and issuing proper legislations for enhancing energy and water production efficiency and eonomising their consumption. With figures showing meteoric rise of water consumption in the GCC member state in recent years, the Declaration highlighted the need for changing the consumption patterns by wedding awareness and educational programmes with water pricing mechanisms and employing innovation and modern technology in the rationalisation policy. ’’The GCC should develop their own designs for construction of power and water stations to international best practices in order to elevate their efficiency, mitigate environmental impact, reduce water leakage and wastage, the Declaration underlined. The Declaration also proposed a blanket review of agricultural development in the GCC states and introduction of a national agricultural policies focusing on conservation of water and giving added value to the economy.
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