Feeding The Planet

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GCC | MILAN

FEEDING

THE PLANET

As the successful Expo Milano 2015 comes to a close, BQ speaks to some of the GCC pavilions to find out how far ahead they are in the food security race

By Shereen D’Souza, Doha

Six months, 1.1 million sq. m of exhibition space and over 20 million visitors later, the Expo Milano 2015 has proved to be a successful platform to exchange ideas and shared solutions on food security, stimulating each country’s creativity and encouraging innovation for a sustainable future.

While in the period between 2010 and 2012, approximately 870 million people were undernourished, approximately 2.8 million people died from obesity and excess weight related diseases in the same period.

To counter the 1.3 billion tons of food that goes to waste every year, the Milan Expo provided an opportunity for economies around the world to showcase their efforts in undertaking conscious political decisions, developing and leading sustainable lifestyles and using technology to judiciously consume scarce resources.

Over 140 participating countries presented their best technologies and the GCC states were no exception.

Speaking about how Qatar is bq-magazine.com

showing its commitment to safe, healthy and convenient food, Mohammed Al Bloshi, COO of Qatar Pavilion at the Milan Expo, tells BQ magazine about the Food Security Matrix developed by the National Food Security Programme that

The government of Qatar realises the importance of food security and has put together the QNFSP, a comprehensive working paper, to ensure a sustainable and secure food future for Qatar focuses on “what we grow, how we store our food to diminish wastage and how we trade on the

international market.” Qatar imports about 90 percent of its food. This means that food security is of paramount importance. The government of Qatar realises the importance of food security and has put together the Qatar National Food Security Plan (FSP), a comprehensive working paper to ensure a sustainable and secure food future for Qatar. Al Bloshi says: “Outlined in this plan are strategies to increase the productivity of the farming acreage in Qatar while at the same time working with other countries to purchase what it cannot produce.”

H.E. Dr Thani Ahmed Al-Zeyoudi, permanent representative of the UAE to IRENA and director of Energy and Climate Change at the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs stresses on how the UAE’s leadership has always recognised the critical importance of water and food and their potential impact on national security. “The UAE is very arid and imports the great majority

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of its food. We have addressed this in part through major infrastructure investments – for instance, we are the world’s second largest producer of desalinated water. But we have also taken a strategic approach: the country adopted a national Water Conservation Strategy in 2010, and a reduction in water scarcity is a key part of the national targets set under the UAE’s Vision 2021 development strategy,” he explains.

Water worries The scarce resource of water is a universal cause for worry and Qatar is developing a very innovative system in this regard. “Qatar’s groundwater is considered a “first order resource” which means it is a resource that is becoming scarcer relative to population. Qatari farms extract water from the aquifer at a rate of four times the overall yearly recharge from rain, runoff, and percolation from agriculture,” says Al Bloshi. Increased water salinity has led to land degradation and a decline in crop yields resulting in the abandonment of farms. “Under the Qatar National Food Security Programme (QNFSP), water generated in the new desalination system during off peak times will be pumped into the aquifer to supplement natural replenishment,” he reveals.

Perhaps the simplest and most efficient approach the UAE is undertaking is through conservation and eliminating inefficiencies by decreasing water demand and maximising reclamation. A good example of how this works is The Environment Agency - Abu Dhabi, which

has introduced a smart monitoring system for the more than 228,000 hectares of forestry it manages, with the aim of reducing the use of groundwater by 80 percent by 2030.

“Abu Dhabi Food Control Authority has also introduced a multi-phased, smart irrigation technology projected to improve the efficiency of water use, helping farmers to make their activities more profitable whilst boosting the sustainability of agriculture in general, which accounts for up to 75 percent of the country’s annual water consumption,” explains Dr Al-Zeyoudi.

With the support of the Abu Dhabi government, a pilot programme has been launched to test and develop advanced energy-efficient seawater desalination technologies powered by renewable energy

“Qatar’s academic institutions and laboratories are investing in research that will bring forth more effective farming methods, better yielding seedlings and hybrids with greater resistance to pests and diseases” sources. The long-term objective of the programme is to develop renewable energy-powered desalination

‘Food for Thought – Shaping and Sharing the Future’ UAE Pavilion, Expo Milano 2015. Image courtesy: UAE Pavilion

H.E. Dr Thani Ahmed Al-Zeyoudi, permanent representative of the UAE to IRENA and director of Energy and Climate Change, UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs

plants by 2020, capable of providing 1,500 cubic metres of potable water per day – enough to meet the water requirements for around 500 homes.

In addition, researchers at the Masdar Institute have succeeded in inventing a new water desalination membrane that can be cleaned, using nanotechnology, without shutting down the plant. Institute researchers have also developed a new gelatinous material which, when mixed with sand, increases the sand’s ability to preserve water threefold, avoiding water loss through evaporation or penetrating deeper into the soil.

Oman is doing its part as well, and the focus of their pavilion at the expo is water conservation. The pavilion, which is spread over an area of 2,790 sq. m., conveys the care with which the Omanis protect, manage and preserve water as a vital and precious resource. With unreliable rainfall, no rivers and limited underground reservoirs, the harvest of the land rests heavily on an ancient system of water distribution.

A sustainable system that works on the natural gravity of the land, the splendidly-engineered Aflaj, is the system of underground and surface canals that have watered the country’s agriculture for millennia. The ancient Aflaj, five of which are listed UNESCO World Heritage Sites, still delivers 900 million cubic metres of October 2015

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water per year which is more than 70 percent of the country’s water use, and irrigates about 55 percent of Oman’s farm land.

Kuwait currently, is faced with the major challenges of water, agriculture and energy. Drinking water is a vital resource for this country and in 1953, Kuwait built the first desalination plant in the world based on multi-stage flash (MSF) technology – it now has seven plants producing 1.85 billion litres of water a day. The treatment plant at Sulaibiyah on the other hand, purifies 600,000 cubic metres of waste water, per day.

The green way Qatar, the world’s largest exporter of natural gas – the cleanest fossil fuel – is also making headway in developing green technologies.

Guided by the Qatar National Vision 2030, which is a blueprint for sustainability in every area of the lives of Qatari people, the country is putting in place new technologies and innovative solutions to achieve food security. “This quest cannot come at the expense of increasing the carbon footprint, hence the push to develop new green technologies,” says Al Bloshi while speaking of their ‘green’ plans. “Qatar fully subscribes to the belief that nations must do more to lessen their carbon footprint wherever possible. Hence, in its quest to achieve food security, Qatar is adamant that this goal must not come at the expense of the environment,” comments Al Bloshi.

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The UAE is also investing tens of billions of US dollars in green technologies. The Abu Dhabi government alone committed to investing USD 15 billion in Masdar, the emirate’s renewable energy company. “We have committed to greater adoption of clean and sustainable farming as part of our green economy push.

We have also committed to greater education and training in sustainable methods of farming while embracing and optimising agriculture methods and crops that fare better in dryland environments,” says Dr Al-Zeyoudi and adds: “Importantly, we are focusing for the long term by ramping-up research and development to bolster our food production, while using less energy and water in the process. And because most of our food is imported, all this has meant supporting agriculture and communities in partner countries around the world.”

Happy pavilions “With the world’s population forecast to surge to eight billion by 2030, we are faced with the task of producing – in less than two decades – roughly 50 percent more energy, 50 percent more food and 30 percent more fresh water, while limiting our environmental impact,” Dr Al-Zeyoudi says.

The expo has been rather successful for the participating nations and UAE confirms the response has been excellent. “Tens of thousands of people, from all over the world, have

Qatar Pavilion, Souk boats and fishing nets. Image courtesy: Qatar Pavilion

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Mohammed Al Bloshi, COO, Qatar Pavilion at Expo Milano 2015

visited the UAE pavilion, which has provided them with an inspirational and holistic encounter with the UAE and its people. The UAE’s transformation into a thriving, world-class economy, that attracts people from across the globe, has excited the interest of Milan Expo visitors to travel to the emirates,” Dr Al-Zeyoudi comments.

The Bahrain pavilion, conceived as a continuous landscape of fruit gardens which intersect in a series of enclosed exhibition spaces, was one of the popular structures at the expo. Built out of white prefabricated concrete panels, the pavilion will be moved to Bahrain at the end of the expo and rebuilt to serve as a botanical garden.

The Qatar Pavilion is definitely holistic, interactive and informative, it creates an oasis of innovation, invention, energy, industry and green technologies. “Guided by the all-encompassing Qatar National Vision 2030, Qatar is parlaying its petro dollars into new and lasting ventures that will sustain it in the future. Qatar’s academic institutions and laboratories are investing in research that will bring forth more effective farming methods, better yielding seedlings and hybrids with greater resistance to pests and diseases,” Al Bloshi concludes.

Lead image: Tree of Life at Expo Milano 2015