GRM 2010 Report - Centre of Islamic Studies - University of ...

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The 2010 Gulf Research Meeting
about the regime’s potential to benefit from nuclear technology He said these benefits offered
an additional rationale for Abu Dhabi’s investment in nuclear energy, although it is not currently
competitive in cost compared with fossil fuels. The thesis stirred a lot of debate and most agreed
that most of these hypotheses are speculative and need to be tested with more observations in
the future.
A pressing issue facing the GCC is that of water resources, and how best to sustainably manage
the limited amounts of water in the region. Waled Al-Zubairi from the Arabian Gulf University
focused on such issues in his paper “Alternative Water Policies in the GCC.” After a presentation
on the sources and uses of water, the problems and challenges faced in the management of water
resources and the efforts being made in water resources management in the GCC, he presented
alternative water policies and showed that the water sector even at his best performance and
using all the available tools would not be able to achieve any water sustainability for the GCC,
for all the driving forces of the water sector are located outside its domain of management and
control.
The issue of water as a resource was continued with a case study on the situation in Singapore,
which provides a good example for the GCC to consider. Faith Hu’s Paper was on water scarcity,
and her presentation included the key water issues in the GCC, i.e., water security vs. food