Only deserts, with nothing to conserve? Social enterprise Goumbook on why the Middle East needs an oceans initiative

Research shows that these “dead zones” which naturally occur at depths between 200 to 800 metres in some parts of the world are seeing their oxygen content depleted. The phenomenon is made worse by climate change. In such marine dead zones, the warming waters have almost no oxygen left. 

Yet it is challenging to get people living in the region to see the value of the marine ecosystems of the Arabian Gulf and the Mediterranean. In June this year, at the second annual MENA Oceans Summit in Dubai, Razan Al Mubarak, UN Climate Change High-Level champion said that there needs to be more robust collaboration so that the oceans can continue to thrive and support global ecological balance. They must be viewed as invaluable allies in building a resilient planet, she said. 

The MENA region, which refers to the Middle East and North Africa, could also benefit with greater integration of ocean-based measures into their national policies, especially as updates to the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) of individual countries are due by 2025, emphasised Al Mubarak. 

In the latest Eco-Business Podcast, Middle East correspondent Rachel Kelly speaks to a representative from Goumbook, the social enterprise behind the Oceans Summit and an initiative to shine a light on regional ocean priorities. Founder Tatiana Abella also shares why she started Goumbook, how the conversations on water conservation and agriculture has evolved in the Middle East, and the organisation’s next steps. 

Tune in as we discuss:

• Goumbook’s origins
• A missing sense of ‘rootedness’ for people in the Middle East?
• More about the MENA Oceans Initiative
• Scaling sustainable agriculture research in the region
• Next steps: Addressing the ‘social’ aspect of sustainability

The transcript in full:

Goumbook founder and managing director Tatiana Abella. Image: Goumbook

Let’s lay the foundations here. Tell us more about GoumBook.

Goumbook started in 2009, so it’s been almost 15 years. “Goum” comes from an Arabic word very specific to the Gulf region. The “Goum” was the tribe, the family travelling around the desert. The word comes from the Bedouins, pastoral nomadic tribes who have historically inhabited the desert regions in the Middle East and North Africa.

The reason I chose the name is that I wanted to really connect what we do with where we are. I wanted something more rooted in the tradition and the culture of the region, and looking around, I found the Goum and the Bedouins actually were very, very sustainable. For example, their way of life, sharing all the resources, never wasting, being very close as a community. And if you think about the way we live today, sometimes we don’t even know our neighbour. We consume like there’s no tomorrow. We waste so much. We definitely need to look back at how, the previous generations used to live. That was very, very sustainable compared to the way we live today.

What has that journey been like for you? How have you seen sustainability evolve in the region for the past 15 years?

In 2009, things were very different. We were not even talking about sustainability. It was more about eco-friendly services and products. It was about conserving water and energy. That was already something that seemed to be really extreme, especially in the Middle East. At that time, we had very easy access to energy. Cheap energy, cheap water. There was a study by the WWF at that time, that established that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) was the biggest consumer per capita of water. I think it was 550 litres per person per day, compared to Europe where it was around 250 litres. For me, that was quite shocking. 

Goumbook started to raise awareness about these facts, about the importance of conserving water and energy. To do this, we had to connect people to the local environment.

The population, specifically in the UAE, was very transient. People were mainly expats, and there wasn’t a connection to where we were living. Many people would tell me, “Well, I want to go back to my own country. This is not my home. This is a desert, there’s nothing to protect and conserve here.”

So we started with a tree planting programme. It was the first one in the region, where we planted indigenous trees, explaining the beauty of nature in the desert, that it might be different from what we know in Asia, in Europe or in the United States, but it is definitely something worth protecting. Indigenous trees are able to survive in the desert with basically no water compared to other trees that we imported at that time. 

We would then talk about water. Where is the water coming from? Desalination.Then we go on to talk about the impact of desalination in terms of energy usage, its impact on oceans – whereby when we desalinate, there’s all the brine that goes back into the sea with a massive impact on marine life and corals.

It was an easy way to approach the local population, reconnect with nature, and at the same time talk about very important topics. Throughout the years, things have evolved, and we actually ended up hosting COP28 in in 2023.

Today there is also much more awareness from a business point of view. Sustainability is definitely part of the conversation. It is part of strategy. It is part of the core aspect of business for the UAE, for Saudi Arabia, for Qatar. So today we can talk about sustainability in a very different way compared to 2009.

Beyond tree planting and awareness campaigns, what are the other initiatives of Goumbook?

There are mainly three pillars. The first is awareness and education. I believe that if we don’t know what the challenges are, we will never act. 

Then we developed a whole pillar around corporate social responsibility (CSR). This is about how to engage employees within a company to create a culture of sustainability with more awareness on environmental impact.

Our specialty is to look at where the gaps are, where there is a need that no one dares to address and shine a spotlight on a specific challenge. We created campaigns around indoor air quality, food waste, and plastic pollution. 

In the past two to three years, we’ve started developing broader, long-term initiatives rather than just campaigns.

Last year we launched the MENA Oceans Initiative, looking at oceans throughout the whole region, as well as the MENAT Regenerative Agriculture Programme, looking at agricultural challenges in the region. While MENA refers to Middle East and North Africa, MENAT refers to Middle East, North Africa, and Turkey.

Abella speaking at the launch of the MENA Oceans Summit 2024, which took place in June this year. Image: Goumbook

Can you tell us more about the MENA Oceans Initiative? Since the COP28 summit, what have you achieved?

In 2023, we launched the MENA Oceans Summit. For us, it was very important to address the fact that COP would have an ocean pavilion for the first time. So we thought, if we’re going to host COP28 in the UAE and have an ocean pavilion, we really need to understand what is happening in the region in terms of oceans.

The summit was endorsed by the Ministry of Climate Change and Environment, and it was very successful. We had many representatives, from the private sector, from the government, and also from research and academia. It was very clear that a lot is happening in the region. There is a lot of research, a lot of science. Different countries are taking different steps towards protecting the oceans. However, we realised that we needed a bit more transparency around what is happening, bringing together all the different stakeholders. Beyond just a summit, we needed a network, something that allowed the different partners to come together and work on specific issues, not just at the country level, but at the regional level. 

At COP28, with the support of the United Nations resident office in the UAE, we launched the network at the Ocean Pavilion. This was groundbreaking. We were asked questions like, “Why are you doing this? What is in the MENA region to protect?” Not many people are aware of the incredible biodiversity, the different water bodies that we have in the region, and their importance in supporting the blue economy. Most of the countries in the region depend on the blue economy, either for trade, for fisheries, for food security, or for tourism. Once our oceans are not healthy, this would create a huge disruptions and financial issues for different countries. 

This year we had the second edition of the MENA Oceans Summit. It’s very clear now that this has become an initiative that is successful at bringing together not just regional partners and stakeholders, but also at mobilising international entities and organisations such as the UN. 

This was very important because finally, we have a voice, and we can talk about what is happening in the region at a global level. The summit was opened officially by Her Excellency Razan Mubarak, a high level UN climate champion who was part of the COP presidency in the UAE. She would be supporting UN again in her second year at COP29 in Baku.

Let’s talk about agriculture now. You mentioned the MENAT Regenerative Agriculture Programme?

The initiative focuses on research, data and science-based solutions for the region. We look at the challenge of food systems and climate change. The region has a very diverse climate, from desert areas in in the Gulf to very intensive agriculture in North Africa. The climate is very harsh, temperatures are very high and we have very high levels of soil salinity.

So we need to understand how we can go back to a simple way of agriculture without using harsh chemicals, without depleting the soil, making sure we maintain soil health. If we continue to do agriculture the way we do it today, we are depleting the soil with the risk of not being able to grow anything after 50 or 60 years. 

How can we look at the future if we are not able to change the way we do agriculture today? How can we do this if we don’t know, from a scientific point of view, what can be done and what should be stopped? There is a lot of research being done, but we realised that for researchers, the moment they published their work, their research doesn’t move and doesn’t continue.

Action is missing because there isn’t that mentality of working with business to commercialise the research. We decided to support researchers and academia by highlighting their solutions, creating a kind of accelerator throughout the region. We put together an incredible pool of judges and mentors. 

For seven to eight months, mentorship is provided and there are different courses that participants can take. The initiative is sponsored and supported by HSBC. It is also done in partnership with the Europe Institute of Technology. Europe and some other countries also have the same conditions and the same climates.

This year, we have three winners – all women. One from Saudi Arabia, one from the UAE, and one from Egypt. 

All have different solutions, mainly related to soil, because at the end of the day the agriculture is clearly about soil health, not only in terms of food security, but also in terms of climate change.

Soil is a very important player in carbon dioxide (CO2) sequestration. This is something we don’t talk enough about. With healthy soils, we have better probabilities of sequestering larger amounts of carbon.

The programme was very successful, and we are launching the second edition in September. 

We are now calling for applications from any researcher. Participants do not have to be from the region, as long as they have a solution that can be implemented in the MENAT region, that would be of interest to us.

How are the three winners doing?

There is a lot of interest from big companies, including manufacturing companies from the region. We are looking at bringing their solutions to implementation and teaming up with farmers. We want to help them bring their research and test them outside the universities and research institutions. 

What do you think are some of the key issues when it comes to sustainability in the MENA region looking at the next five to 10 years?

For Goumbook, we would like to look at the social aspect of sustainability and support more vulnerable communities. I think not enough is being done and it is something we need to address. 

Broadly, we want humanity to thrive and be healthy. We want to maintain nature the way we know it today,

This transcript has been edited for brevity and clairty