14. LIFE BELOW WATER 15. LIFE ON LAND 16. PEACE, JUSTICE AND STRONG INSTITUTIONS |
  
|
Last week, our team member Noura Alnuaimi visited the Environment Agency in Abu Dhabi.
This institute was established in 1996, and it is dedicated to improve and enhance
the overall quality of Abu Dhabi environment and reserve the biodiversity
in both biomes, the marine and the desert.
She met Rajeyah Bin Kulaib, an analyst for terrestrial and marine biodiversity,
the goal of this meeting was to focus only on the marine biodiversity,
but she was having a good time that she talked for hours jumping from one topic into another.
While talking, they mentioned the different biomes in the UAE
and the most iconic species in Abu Dhabi, such as the Ghaf trees, Socotra cormorants, mangroves.
They talked about what laws and regulations does the UAE enforce to protect these species
and the actions taken by the environment agency to save the endangered types and protect them,
for example, banning treating wild animals as pets and banning trading endangered species.
The Gene bank is one way to preserve the genetic material of both plants and animals,
another thing is to build wildlife conservation to protect and breed them
to increase the number of the endangered species,
also implanting chips inside the animals to know their specific location
and their vital signs in order to be able to gather statistics
and take action if the animal vital signs are abnormal.
Another thing that they talked about was Nagoya protocol, an agreement
that ensures access to genetic resources and fair share of benefits from using them
this protocol also saves the rights of the traditional and local communities
that holds the traditional knowledge and the genetic resources by developing their communities,
financial subsidies and whatever is mutually agreed upon.
Finally, they discussed how the plastic use is affecting the marine life,
and how it causes many marine animals to choke and die
after mistakenly eating plastic,thinking that it is food,
also how micro plastic was found inside many of the marine animals that human eats,
and that of course will be transferred to human bodies and genes.
The different laws that is used to reduce the plastic in the country are now being implemented,
such as increasing the taxes and tariffs rates for plastic-based products
and raising awareness of the danger of plastic to the public.
We believe that the meeting was very successful,
as we learnt a lot about our surrounding environment, and the UAE efforts into protecting,
the meeting was very informative and the topics mentioned were very interesting and critical,
not only for the UAE, but for the whole world.
Green Campus 
1
Previous
Present
Next
