This image taken by expedition doctor Andrew Peacock of www.footloosefotography.com on December 30, 2013 shows the ship MV Akademik Shokalskiy (C) still stuck in the ice off East Antarctica, as it waits to be rescued. An Australian icebreaker was on December 30 battling against bad weather to reach a ship carrying a scientific expedition stranded off Antarctica, leaving open the possibility of a helicopter evacuation, authorities said. The ship is carrying scientists and tourists who are following the Antarctic path of explorer Douglas Mawson a century ago, details of which at www.spiritofmawson.com, and have been carrying out the same scientific experiments his team conducted during the 1911-1914 Australian Antarctic Expedition -- the first large-scale Australian-led scientific expedition to the frozen continent. RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE AFP PHOTO / MANDATORY CREDIT: Andrew Peacock / www.footloosefotography.com / AFP PHOTO / footloosefotography.com / Andrew Peacock
Children today will witness the results of glacial retreat in Antarctica. Andrew Peacock / AFP

Editorial

Innovation is our main hope for dealing with climate change

The implementation of measures to save the environment is slower than global warming

National Editorial

17 April, 2018

Most people concur that planet Earth is being irrevocably altered and damaged by the ravages of human behaviour. But with the mounting urgency of dealing with climate change and the need to bequeath a healthy planet to future generations comes a seismic question: what to do about it? In 2006, Al Gore's documentary An Inconvenient Truth illuminated the palpable threat of climate change to viewers across the world. Mr Gore, who won a Zayed Future Energy Prize in 2015, was back in the UAE last month to raise awareness of the greatest challenge of our time. Twelve years on from his expose, the threat posed by climate change is even more pressing. As The National reported this week, two NYU Abu Dhabi scientists are working on a documentary charting glacial retreat in Greenland and Antarctica. In both regions, ice sits on land, meaning glacial melting will substantially raise sea levels by the end of this century, a frightening possibility in the not-too-distant future.

The need to protect the environment we live in dates back to Sheikh Zayed's time.The UAE's rulers have put sustainability at the heart of the transition away from dependence on oil, embodied in projects like Masdar, but there is much work still to be done. The country, the only signatory in the region to the Paris Climate Accord, has a scarcity of natural resources and needs to protect those it does have, including a variety of rare creatures such as the endangered dugong. 

Innovation is our main hope for dealing with a warming climate. As The National reported today, Dubai-based company Ecocoast is designing a 550-metre barrier to catch plastic debris in the sea. More than eight million tonnes of plastic are dumped annually into the world's oceans, making its work particularly important. Elsewhere, researchers in the US and UK have engineered an enzyme that consumes plastic. The pace of global climate action is slower than that of climate change. If we are to save the planet, environmental awareness must be matched by innovation. It falls on governments worldwide to foster it.

Zayed Sustainability Prize
While you're here
Family reunited

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was born and raised in Tehran and studied English literature before working as a translator in the relief effort for the Japanese International Co-operation Agency in 2003.+

She moved to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies before moving to the World Health Organisation as a communications officer.

She came to the UK in 2007 after securing a scholarship at London Metropolitan University to study a master's in communication management and met her future husband through mutual friends a month later.

The couple were married in August 2009 in Winchester and their daughter was born in June 2014.

She was held in her native country a year later.+

'Worse than a prison sentence'

Marie Byrne, a counsellor who volunteers at the UAE government's mental health crisis helpline, said the ordeal the crew had been through would take time to overcome.

“It was worse than a prison sentence, where at least someone can deal with a set amount of time incarcerated," she said.

“They were living in perpetual mystery as to how their futures would pan out, and what that would be.

“Because of coronavirus, the world is very different now to the one they left, that will also have an impact.

“It will not fully register until they are on dry land. Some have not seen their young children grow up while others will have to rebuild relationships.

“It will be a challenge mentally, and to find other work to support their families as they have been out of circulation for so long. Hopefully they will get the care they need when they get home.”