The governments of the GCC are ostensibly laying plans for the diversification of their economies and reduction of their reliance on fossil fuels. Just last March the UAE announced the inauguration of a $600million solar power plant aimed at meeting some of its residential power demands. Saudi Arabia allegedly hopes to meet one-third of its electricity demand using solar energy by 2032. All the GCC governments have some version of a 2030 national envision that entails a diversification of the economy intended to maintain high standards of living while reducing reliance on oil revenue. But given the vagaries of the neo-liberal economic model and the systematic political impotence of the Gulf governments, it is hard to put a lot of stock in these visions.
For the most part, GCC governments are hoping to kick the can down the road by addressing immediate challenges rather than embarking on strategic long-term change. As evidenced by ongoing demands for government housing and jobs in Bahrain, for example, the average citizen considers economic development as a right owed to her by her government. On one hand the government cannot realistically, sustainably continue to provide for its citizens in the manner they await; on the other hand rampant corruption and resource mismanagement result in even less government responsiveness and efficiency than can be expected. Sustainability and other macro concerns of economics and ecology rarely enter the debate as far as popular political demands are concerned. There is no reflection upon the cosmos of world we inhabit – what petro dollars have done to our society and whether we want to proceed down that road. The remarkable ecological indifference with which most Gulf residents go about their daily lives is shocking.
This problem of getting anyone to care is in fact at the heart of most of the GCC’s troubles today. To use Bruno Latour’s extremely pertinent turn of phrase, the foremost challenge of the Persian Gulf in the age of the Anthropocene boils down to turning matters of fact into matters of concern. A matter of ‘concern’ does not refer to a problem merely keeping one up at night: I use it to imply a holistic understanding of a problem and an assumption of a collective responsibility to address it. Caring about carbon emissions means not just carpooling to work, but simultaneously recognizing and caring about the economic, socio-political and cultural /religious principles according to which the country runs. It requires an acknowledgment of our place in the wider scheme of things, as we relate to other countries and the planet itself. It requires that we reorient our conception of justice and progress from the idea that we also are entitled to whatever other (seemingly happier) people have to a more sophisticated one rooted in concern about our place in the world.
Some of this indifference can be pinned down to a simple lack of awareness and/ or perspective. The average citizen is concerned with providing a decent standard of living for herself and her family – immediate problems of housing and employment take precedence over the macro contexts of economic and political theory. A powerful sentiment often observed among discontented populations in Bahrain, for example, is that of perceived inequity: why do other citizens of the Gulf have so much while we have so little? Why can our government not provide for us as much as other Gulf governments provide for their citizens? The same sentiment reigns in Saudi, where class and income inequality have reached alarming levels.
The future of the region depends not on a certain model of democracy or a certain energy technology winning out, but on first of all getting both leaders and citizens of the Gulf to acknowledge the existence of a problem, assume personal responsibility for it, and then go about finding solutions and building consensus in accordance with their unique cultural, religious and contextual environment. All political or economic demands and reform agendas must be framed in a larger ecological setting for them to be of any real value. As long as the average citizen thinks of herself (or at least is only able to act) as a subject of rule rather than an agent of change, there is little incentive to assume any responsibility for the status quo. The Gulf is now an endangered homeland until its people develop the sense that they are as bound to the fate of the planet as everyone else.
Wings of a Giant 