climate change on UAE - Stockholm Environment Institute-US Center

also grown. Most agriculture is on small private
farms that have been established in relatively
recent times, but there are also small areas
of traditional date palm gardens and larger
government forage production units. Since
the 1970s, there has been a drive to increase
agricultural production that has led to a rapid
depletion of underground aquifers, lowered
water tables, and caused extreme increases in
soil and water salinity.
A considerable amount of investment has been
made to ‘green’ the desert. In 1974, there was
only one public park in Abu Dhabi with very little
greenery, but today the number has increased
to about 40, covering an area of more than 300
hectares. The expansion of the green areas in
the Emirates is in line with the department’s
goal of extending the greenery to cover 8 per
cent of Dubai’s total urban area. During 2003,
another 30 ha were added to Dubai’s greenbelt.
At present, the planted area amounts to
about 3.2 % or 2200 ha (Ma, 2005). Amenity
plantations use an estimated 245 Mm³/yr of
water from a combination of treated effluent,
desalinated water and also local groundwater.
In Al Ain, traditional oasis plantations that
relied previously on aflaj irrigation have since
become supported by wells when the aflaj flows
ceased in the early 1990’s.
The lack of arable land, intense heat, periodic
locust invasions, and limited water are major
obstacles for the agriculture sector. Lack
of precipitation means that agriculture is
dependent on irrigation, which is sourced
from groundwater (both fresh and desalinated
brackish and saline), treated sewage effluent
(TSE), and desalinated water. The main
problem is that groundwater systems can
no longer adequately support existing, large
agricultural developments. Alternative water
sources are now being investigated and utilized.
Much of the farm and forest sector use brackish
groundwater while amenity plantings rely on
both TSE and wells, especially in Al Ain city
where over 400 have recently been inventoried.
Treated effluent is also used for irrigation of
small scale fodder farms. Amenity watering
relies predominantly on TSE. For example, at
the Nakheel and Al Ajban farms, desalinated
water is now being utilized for irrigation,
allowing for a much wider and marketable
range of crops. At the former site, desalinated
water, imported from the Qidfa, Fujairah plant,
is blended with indigenous, brackish water to
produce an irrigation water quality of about
1000 mg/l TDS, once again allowing for growing
of fruits and vegetables.
Users employ traditional water utilization and
conservation along with new management
methods. Water conservation and new
technologies to sustain supply in the semiarid
<strong>climate</strong> include desalination plants,
construction of dams, restoration of traditional
underground water channels (falaj system), well
drilling and aquifer testing and exploration. For
the last 3,000 years or so aflaj have provided for
sutstainable agriculture and civilisation in the
Al Ain Region. While historically reliant on the
aflaj, water users in the Al Ain region have seen
their usability decrease to declining groundwater
levels in the source or mother well areas over
the last 20-25 years. Despite the difficulties in
maintaining the aflaj flows, it is the strategy
of Al Ain Municipality who supports the falaj
systems, as per decree by the late Sheihk Zayed
bin Sultan Al Nayhan, will continue to finance
the Falaj and the area of oases that they sustain
at all cost. At the same time, the water table in
the vicinity of the aflaj shari’a itself has steadily
risen in recent years due to artificial recharge
of groundwater from treated sewage effluent
and desalinated irrigation water which is now
widely used to keep the garden city of Al Ain
green (Brook et al., 2005).
Localized irrigation strategies are dominated
by drip, trickle, and bubbler methods but some
overhead irrigation is used on lawns and some
forage. Most forage is grown with drip irrigation.
A small amount of flood irrigation (basin) is still
undertaken in traditional date garden areas.
For several reasons (rising average salinity of
groundwater, difficulties in maintaining yields of
irrigation water from boreholes, a dramatically
increasing irrigated farm area), drip irrigation
has become almost the sole irrigation method,
a situation which is probably unique in the
world.
For a while, subsidies promoted agricultural
expansion to the tune of 3,000 new farms (of 2-3
ha) each year, although expansion is currently
restricted due to exhaustion of groundwater
supplies and has leveled off somewhat. We
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Climate Change Impacts, Vulnerability & Adaptation