Mangroves in Abu Dhabi need more than guidelines for protection, planner says

Guidelines are not enough to prevent Abu Dhabi's concrete jungle swallowing huge stretches of mangroves with abundant wildlife, an environmental planner warns.

A stretch of mangroves in Abu Dhabi. Andrew Parsons / The National

Guidelines are not enough to prevent Abu Dhabi's concrete jungle swallowing huge stretches of mangroves with abundant wildlife, an environmental planner warned yesterday. Neil Mallen, of the Urban Planning Council (UPC), said laws would have to be introduced to prevent the killing of animals and the destruction of areas of natural beauty.
On Monday the UPC and the Environment Agency Abu Dhabi announced guidelines to control development in the area east of the city, rebranded the Eastern Mangrove Lagoon National Park. Those guidelines, with appropriate alterations, will also be issued to firms wanting to work in four other areas to be designated as national parks. But Mr Mallen, environmental planning manager at the UPC, admitted guidelines would not be enough to safeguard what the council described as the most important ecological feature of the country.
Only strictly enforced laws could do that, he said. "Many of the great cities of the world have large parks integrated into the city," said Mr Mallen. "Abu Dhabi's eastern mangroves could serve as a large, open green space that the city wraps around, so it would be a shame if development cleared all of that to make way for another concrete jungle." Hundreds of fish species, seabirds, turtles, sea snakes, dolphins and the second-largest population of dugongs in the world inhabit the marshy shorelines. Killer whales have also been spotted off Abu Dhabi's coast.
"People don't realise how remarkable that is," said Mr Mallen. "Very few cities in the world have those kinds of animals so close to the city centre. We're working on affording some kind of legal protection for these sectors. We want to actually designate the national park as a system of protected habitats and we'll discourage them from developing core areas." The 1.3 sq km of dense mangroves and 30.4 sq km of "open" mangrove forest are considered crucial to the aesthetic and ecological character of the region. The UPC says that is the reason for taking a tough stance on development in the Eastern Mangrove Lagoon, with the hope that it will eventually become an internationally recognised unique ecosystem.
While the Eastern Mangrove Lagoon is the focus of the first planning guideline, four more booklets tailored to the other mangrove sectors are being drafted. A UPC spokesman confirmed that all five pamphlets would be ready by the autumn. A date for the legal framework has not yet been set. Until that happened, plans to protect a key part of the country's heritage were "conceptual", said Mr Mallen, but the guidelines, and later the laws, would discourage construction near the five core national parks.
"Rather than have a pipe go straight through the mangroves, for instance, they would be connected in a way that would not interfere with the environmental features of the area," he said. Mangrove patches were now thinning due to construction pressures, particularly on the east side of the city and northwards near Reem, Saadiyat and Sula islands, he said. But developers were also replanting mangroves to sustain the overall area of growth.
"We have to be careful to make sure we have the space to plant mangroves and make sure that they can survive," said Mr Mallen. In a statement, the general manager of the UPC, Falah al Ahbabi, said the five mangrove belts should be preserved in the long term, as they were "the most important" ecological resource in the country. Mr Ahbabi also emphasised the cultural and historical relevance of the area to the emirate. Pottery found on Delma Island dating back to the Bronze Age indicates seafarers lived in the region some 7,000 years ago, subsisting on the rich marine food provided by the mangroves.
The artefacts point to an early civilisation that may have been the UAE's first inhabitants. "That population thrived due to the high degree of genetic uniqueness and diversity in the Gulf," said Mr Mallen. "In a way, the mangroves are tied to a fascinating heritage, so we really want this to last into the future." @Email:[e-mail]