Josef Aschbacher, director general of the European Space Agency, has told The National that he will be going to the Cop28 summit in Dubai next month to discuss expanding co-operation with the UAE that may involve climate change monitoring.
The UAE Space Agency and ESA, an inter-governmental space agency with 22 member states including non-EU countries such as Norway and the UK, have worked together before.
The ESA has four international partners when it comes to Earth observation: Brazil, Australia, the Philippines and the African Union.
Should a deal be struck at the UN international climate negotiations, it would be the first between the ESA and an Arab country.
“I see the UAE as a very important emerging space power,” Mr Aschbacher said on Sunday. “I would like to explore further elements of co-operation.”
At Cop28, ESA will be putting forward a flagship joint programme with the European Commission called Copernicus, which monitors changes in the land, sea, and atmosphere for security and climate change purposes.
“We have to see what the UAE’s interests are on climate change, but certainly, from the European perspective, it is fair to say that we have one of the strongest space programmes using Earth observation data for climate change activities,” said Mr Aschbacher.
“We are in a bit of an exploratory phase to see what could be the next activities in which we work together.”
Bilateral climate observation partnerships are tailored to each country’s needs.
Data provided by Copernicus can be used to monitor the impact of climate change but also in other sectors such as agriculture monitoring, water management, disaster management and ship routing.
ESA describes it as “taking the pulse of the planet”.
“Countries bring in their local knowledge so that the data can be used cleverly,” said Mr Aschbacher. “In some cases, co-operation emerge in developing satellites or hardware infrastructure ground segments.”
ESA has co-operated several times with the UAE, including with the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre on the Rashid lunar rover.
ESA provided small material samples in the wheels of the 10kg lunar rover whose lander crashed on the Moon in May.
ESA also provided ground segment services for the establishment of a UAE support centre in 2019 for the first visit by UAE astronaut Hazza Al Mansouri to the International Space Station.
More recently, ESA also supported UAE astronaut Sultan Al Neyadi and his backup with training at the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne, Germany, before he spent six months on the ISS. He returned last month.
Space is increasingly viewed as a strategic domain which is important to occupy for civilian and military purposes.
In November, the EU Commission unveiled Iris2, a constellation of up to 170 satellites to be deployed by 2025 to provide secure communication services to public authorities. It will extend to commercial authorities by 2027.
Awareness that conflicts on Earth also effect space has heightened since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year.
High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs Josep Borrell said in a speech in Brussels this year that space will become a “battlefield.”
One month after the start of the war in Ukraine, ESA suspended a €1 billion joint project with Russia called ExoMars, which had been designed to look for signs of life on the Red Planet.
Meanwhile, investments in space and defence are soaring.
Governments invested about €100 billion ($108.58 billion) in space programmes in 2022, which represents a nine per cent overall increasing compared to 2021 and a 16 per cent increase in the space defence sector, according to Mr Borrell.
“The current geopolitical situation shows that space is an integral part of security,” said Mr Aschbacher. “And yes, that is something that will continue.”
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Zakat definitions
Zakat: an Arabic word meaning ‘to cleanse’ or ‘purification’.
Nisab: the minimum amount that a Muslim must have before being obliged to pay zakat. Traditionally, the nisab threshold was 87.48 grams of gold, or 612.36 grams of silver. The monetary value of the nisab therefore varies by current prices and currencies.
Zakat Al Mal: the ‘cleansing’ of wealth, as one of the five pillars of Islam; a spiritual duty for all Muslims meeting the ‘nisab’ wealth criteria in a lunar year, to pay 2.5 per cent of their wealth in alms to the deserving and needy.
Zakat Al Fitr: a donation to charity given during Ramadan, before Eid Al Fitr, in the form of food. Every adult Muslim who possesses food in excess of the needs of themselves and their family must pay two qadahs (an old measure just over 2 kilograms) of flour, wheat, barley or rice from each person in a household, as a minimum.
What is an ETF?
An exchange traded fund is a type of investment fund that can be traded quickly and easily, just like stocks and shares. They come with no upfront costs aside from your brokerage's dealing charges and annual fees, which are far lower than on traditional mutual investment funds. Charges are as low as 0.03 per cent on one of the very cheapest (and most popular), Vanguard S&P 500 ETF, with the maximum around 0.75 per cent.
There is no fund manager deciding which stocks and other assets to invest in, instead they passively track their chosen index, country, region or commodity, regardless of whether it goes up or down.
The first ETF was launched as recently as 1993, but the sector boasted $5.78 billion in assets under management at the end of September as inflows hit record highs, according to the latest figures from ETFGI, a leading independent research and consultancy firm.
There are thousands to choose from, with the five largest providers BlackRock’s iShares, Vanguard, State Street Global Advisers, Deutsche Bank X-trackers and Invesco PowerShares.
While the best-known track major indices such as MSCI World, the S&P 500 and FTSE 100, you can also invest in specific countries or regions, large, medium or small companies, government bonds, gold, crude oil, cocoa, water, carbon, cattle, corn futures, currency shifts or even a stock market crash.
'Skin'
Dir: Guy Nattiv
Starring: Jamie Bell, Danielle McDonald, Bill Camp, Vera Farmiga
Rating: 3.5/5 stars
Abramovich London
A Kensington Palace Gardens house with 15 bedrooms is valued at more than £150 million.
A three-storey penthouse at Chelsea Waterfront bought for £22 million.
Steel company Evraz drops more than 10 per cent in trading after UK officials said it was potentially supplying the Russian military.
Sale of Chelsea Football Club is now impossible.
Profile
Company: Justmop.com
Date started: December 2015
Founders: Kerem Kuyucu and Cagatay Ozcan
Sector: Technology and home services
Based: Jumeirah Lake Towers, Dubai
Size: 55 employees and 100,000 cleaning requests a month
Funding: The company’s investors include Collective Spark, Faith Capital Holding, Oak Capital, VentureFriends, and 500 Startups.
The rules on fostering in the UAE
A foster couple or family must:
- be Muslim, Emirati and be residing in the UAE
- not be younger than 25 years old
- not have been convicted of offences or crimes involving moral turpitude
- be free of infectious diseases or psychological and mental disorders
- have the ability to support its members and the foster child financially
- undertake to treat and raise the child in a proper manner and take care of his or her health and well-being
- A single, divorced or widowed Muslim Emirati female, residing in the UAE may apply to foster a child if she is at least 30 years old and able to support the child financially
Iftar programme at the Sheikh Mohammed Centre for Cultural Understanding
Established in 1998, the Sheikh Mohammed Centre for Cultural Understanding was created with a vision to teach residents about the traditions and customs of the UAE. Its motto is ‘open doors, open minds’. All year-round, visitors can sign up for a traditional Emirati breakfast, lunch or dinner meal, as well as a range of walking tours, including ones to sites such as the Jumeirah Mosque or Al Fahidi Historical Neighbourhood.
Every year during Ramadan, an iftar programme is rolled out. This allows guests to break their fast with the centre’s presenters, visit a nearby mosque and observe their guides while they pray. These events last for about two hours and are open to the public, or can be booked for a private event.
Until the end of Ramadan, the iftar events take place from 7pm until 9pm, from Saturday to Thursday. Advanced booking is required.
For more details, email openminds@cultures.ae or visit www.cultures.ae
Stormy seas
Weather warnings show that Storm Eunice is soon to make landfall. The videographer and I are scrambling to return to the other side of the Channel before it does. As we race to the port of Calais, I see miles of wire fencing topped with barbed wire all around it, a silent ‘Keep Out’ sign for those who, unlike us, aren’t lucky enough to have the right to move freely and safely across borders.
We set sail on a giant ferry whose length dwarfs the dinghies migrants use by nearly a 100 times. Despite the windy rain lashing at the portholes, we arrive safely in Dover; grateful but acutely aware of the miserable conditions the people we’ve left behind are in and of the privilege of choice.
