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more diffuse business activities of Saudi Arabia, by contrast, make local consumption
patterns more important for both the country’s global ecological footprint and for the
sustainability of its hydrocarbon and energy-intensive exports.
This also raises the issue of whether the new sustainability initiatives will have
any impact on domestic politics and the outlook of local society and business in general.
As things stand now, linkage will be limited and local players are, indeed, not the main
audience for the new policies. Some businesses might get involved in sustainable energy
projects through support services, but they are unlikely to be leaders. Solar energy is the
one field of electricity production in which the private sector might play a somewhat
larger role, thanks to the (relative) scalability of solar plants. As far as regulatory change
should have an impact on consumer behaviour, most of the sustainable technology in
consumer durables, housing and so on will continue to be imported (with the partial
exception of building materials).
Similarly, the spillover from new research units and universities to business and
society at large is likely to be limited, as most of their output will not find local takers
outside the large joint ventures and state-owned enterprises mentioned above. Impact on
and interaction with local civil society interests will also remain limited for the time
being: although there are environmental societies in a couple of countries, the general
awareness of environmental issues is very low, even more than of other social and
cultural issues, and enclave-style developments are not likely to change much about this.
Civil society, including environmental groups, is only well organized in Bahrain and
Kuwait, exactly the two countries with no great ambitions in sustainable development to
date. This underlines the irrelevance of societal input in the decision-making process on
sustainability policies. In Qatar, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Oman, low civil-society
capacity explains the regimes’ extensive political autonomy, which is exactly what has
allowed successful enclave-based development. Policy is decided by a few ruling family
members under consultation with small groups of technocrats – and in this sense is very
different from environmental decision-making in most Western countries.
3. CONCLUSION AND OUTLOOK
In many ways, the current boom is giving back to GCC states the economic and
developmental leadership they had to some degree lost after the 1980s. Sustainable
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