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Environment Crisis Looming, Emirates Warned DUBAI (AFP) - The affluent United Arab Emirates, more used to being praised for its luxury lifestyle, has been warned of a looming environmental crisis. Natural resources are being wasted and the environment destroyed in the headlong rush for growth and development, according to Martin Giesen, dean of the School of Architecture of the American University of Sharjah. "Unfortunately we design here with myopic focus and now the UAE is paying for its world class infrastructure with a world class ranking in energy consumption, water consumption and waste production," he said. People in the oil-rich Emirates had become dependent on services, which are destroying the environment, he warned. Tuesday's Gulf News gave prominence to the unusual criticism voiced the day before at a seminar in Dubai on the Art of Sustainable Cities in the Middle East. Rainfall in the Emirates was less than one millimeter last winter and water tables are falling, yet average water consumption in the UAE is 353 liters per person - only the United States has a higher consumption level, Giesen said. Per capita fuel consumption in the UAE in 1996 was one third higher than in the United States at 115,600 kilos (254,320 lbs), he noted. The director-general of Dubai's Economic Department added his own acerbic comments about rampant modern development in the Emirate. Mohammad Alabbar called for building regulations and a blending of traditional and new construction methods to take into account the excessive heat of the Gulf. He described the modern business district of Dubai, a canyon of skyscrapers along an eight-lane highway, as "an eyesore of clashing colored glass and concrete." The arid Emirates, founded in 1971, have gone from a backwater surviving on pearl fishing and trading to a modern, developed country in record time on the back of the oil boom
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