#74| Etihad Rail, Rainwater Dams and UN SDGs

Welcome to Climate Middle East! We serve up key climate news — along with sides of research, events, jobs and maybe a joke or two.

📰 Regional Climate News

UAE’s HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, rode a test ride on Etihad Rail from Dubai to Fujairah, the country’s first national rail network, scheduled to commence operations in 2026. It is set to connect 11 cities and regions and is expected to serve 36 million passengers annually by 2030.

Environment Agency Abu Dhabi won 2 Global Good Governance Awards for Sustainability Governance and ESG Championship. It also recently launched the Abu Dhabi Climate Change Adaptation Plan for the Environment Sector.

KSA’s Ministry of Energy, KAPSARC, and Climeworks inaugurated a Direct Air Capture (DAC) demonstration unit in Riyadh to test carbon removal under extreme heat conditions.

KSA is planning to build over 1,000 rainwater dams to harvest four million cubic metres of rainwater to support groundwater recharge, agriculture, and the restoration of natural ecosystems.

🌍 Elsewhere On the Planet

UN recently released its Sustainable Development Goals Report, the tenth annual report of global progress toward the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. While there are many SDGs that intersect with climate issues, here are some of the more prominent ones:

⚡SDG7: Affordable and clean energy

• ➕ Access to clean cooking fuels and technologies rose from 64% to 74% (2015-2023).
• ➕ Renewable energy is the fastest-growing energy source, and is projected to surpass coal as the primary electricity source in 2025.

🏭 SDG9: Industry, innovation and infrastructure

• ➖ Global CO₂ emissions from fuel combustion and industrial processes surged to a record high of 37.6 gigatons in 2024 (8.3% increase from 2015), despite clean energy gains.

🏙️ SDG11: Sustainable Cities and Communities

• ➖ Green spaces in urban areas shrank from 19.5% in 1990 to 13.9% in 2020.
• ➖ Cities require USD 4.5 trillion to USD 5.4 trillion annually for climate-resilient infrastructure, but they secured only USD 831 billion yearly for 2021–2022.

🛒 SDG12: Responsible Consumption and Production

• ➕96% of the world’s 250 largest companies by revenue provide sustainability reporting
• ➖Food waste reached 1.05 billion metric tons in 2022 (132 kilograms per person), representing one fifth of all food available to consumers. Households discard enough food daily to provide over a billion meals.

🌍 SDG13: Climate Action

• ➖Global average temperature reached 1.55°C above pre-industrial levels. 2024 was the hottest year in 175 years, capping a decade of record-breaking temperatures (2015-2024).
• ➕➖Global fossil fuel subsidies fell by 34.5% in 2023 - from a record high of USD 1.68 trillion in 2022 to an estimated USD 1.10 trillion. Despite the drop, fossil fuel subsidies remain nearly three times 2020 levels and well above historical averages.

🌊SDG14: Life Below Water

• ➖In 2024, ocean heat content reached the highest level in 65 years, driving widespread and often irreversible marine ecosystem degradation.
• ➖Only 8.4% of the ocean is classified as marine protected areas, far short of the target of 30% by 2030
• ➖Average ocean pH has decreased from 8.1 in 1985 to 8.04 in 2023

🌱 SDG15: Life on Land

• ➕➖Deforestation is slowing, falling from 12 million hectares per year (2010–2015) to 10 million (2015–2020). At the current rate, however, halting deforestation would take another 25 years.
• ➖Global proportion of degraded land increased from 11.3% to 15.5% (2015-2019), undermining the well-being of 3.2 billion people.
• ➖Over 47,000 species are threatened with extinction especially corals, amphibians and cycads.
• ➕Total development finance for biodiversity from various sources rose from USD 9.5 billion in 2015 to USD 11.9 billion in 2023, marking a 25% increase.

💻 Jobs

• Emirates, Sustainability and Environment Manager, Dubai
• AESG, Technical Director - Sustainability, Dubai
• DMCC, Manager - Sustainability Hub, Dubai
• CECO Environmental Organization, Project Manager, Dubai
• Apparel Group, CSR and Sustainability, Riyadh

And finally,

Why did the CO₂ molecule break up with methane?…Because it heard methane was a much hotter greenhouse gas.

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