Abu Dhabi: To sustain a world population of nine billion people in 2050, the world must double its agricultural production without increasing land and water use, as well as reduce carbon emissions by half.
A report prepared by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) that includes these details therefore calls for businesses to play a key role in ensuring sustainability, along with governments. To that end, a project to enable more environmental and natural conservation in regional production decisions was launched yesterday on the sidelines of the fifth World Future Energy Summit in the capital.
Called Vision 2050 Arabia, the project by the UAE Business Council for Sustainable Development (UAE BCSD), in association with the WBCSD, will engage corporations and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to develop a plan to conserve human, economic and natural resources while also enabling production.
Sustainable employment
"Our project will see the involvement of corporations from across the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. Since the region has a unique energy production structure, this will be one of our areas of focus. In addition, we will also work to provide sustainable employment, which has been one of the key contributing factors in the current political transformation of the Arab world," Hussain Al Mahmoudi, president of the UAE BCSD, told Gulf News.
As part of the project, business leaders from a slew of corporations in the region will participate in 18 monthly workshops aimed at developing the sustainability guidelines.
"At present, we are actually calling out to corporations in the region to get involved. We will begin the workshops within the next three months," Al Mahmoudi said.
Competitive advantage
Once the recommendations are ready, the UAE BCSD will work with government agencies in sectors such as transport and construction to implement industry-wide standards, he added.
Explaining the relevance of such a project, Marcel Engel, managing director, development focus area and regional networks at the WBSCD, said: "Normally, such efforts are fragmented and do not provide companies that undertake them with a competitive advantage. But when a coalition of businesses or civil society develops guidelines which are eventually adopted as regulations, sustainability becomes a standard that everyone must adhere to."
