Mohammed Saeed is just 20 years old and has already seen the effects of climate change on the most valuable resource in his village, its honey.
“The weather’s not good and the bees are dying with the heat,” he said. “Cold is good for bees and it’s gotten hot.”
Mr Saeed has collected honey on the green terraced cliffs of Jebel Habashi in southwest Yemen since he was 12. “In the last four years, it’s gotten bad,” he said. “The weather has changed.”
In addition to climate change, bees in the Gulf face invasive species, habitat degradation, parasitic mites and killer fungi. To tackle these challenges, the Arab Beekeepers Co-operative Association launches next week at the Global Forum for Innovations in Agriculture in Abu Dhabi. The new association will be bring together scientists, honey traders and beekeepers to find environmental and trade solutions to regional problems.
“It’s time to have something for the Arab beekeepers,” said Ahmed Al Ghamdi, the association’s chair and supervisor of the bee research chair at Riyadh’s King Saud University. “Everyone is working by themselves but we’re hoping that this Arab beekeeping association will unite the people and build co-operation between us.”
The first International Conference of the Arab Beekeeping Organisation will be held on February 5 at Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre.
About 2,000 beekeepers and scientists have already signed up for membership. Elected representatives will meet regularly.
It is not a first. In 1994, Mr Al Ghamdi helped establish Arab Beekeepers Union and served as chief of its bee unit.
This time, it’s different. There are more stakeholders, there is more governmental support and more urgency. Nearly 25 years later, the impending disappearance of bees from our planet has raised international alarm. Fears of an agricultural armageddon have even prompted Japanese scientists to create robotic replacements, miniature drones covered in animal hair and ionic liquid gel.
In the Arabian Peninsula, as elsewhere, bees face threats from the macro to the microscopic.
In northern Yemen, bees are being killed off from pesticides used on khat, a narcotic shrub. “Farmers want profit,” said Ishaq Saeed, a honey producer from the Taiz region. “This is our biggest problem and if we got rid of khat, the bees wouldn’t die.”
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Read more:
Honey Bee Deaths tip of iceberg
Making a beeline for liquid gold in the Northern Emirates
WATCH: The UAE honey farm that ships billions of bees around the world
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In western Yemen, Saddam Al Jabberi lost 700 of his 1,000 colonies in Hadramaut last summer. He blames an unusually extreme summer.
“Haudramaut is getting hotter, hot like Abu Dhabi,” said Mr Al Jabberi, who heads a cooperative of 26 honey producers and manages a honey shop in Baniyas.
Closer to home, farmers on the Saiq plateau of Oman's Jebel Al Akhdar have suffered from a series of mild winters and water shortages that crippled harvests. In Ras Al Khaimah and Fujairah, elders say the pollen trails of bees that once dotted the mountains have vanished. In majlises, their generation is not shy to point the finger at pollution caused by quarries, cement factories and urbanisation.
Despite this, honey remains good business, fetching hundreds of dirhams per kilogram. Mr Saeed’s family shop in Abu Dhabi sells an monthly average of 200 kilograms worth Dh45,000.
Saudi Arabia has more than 14,000 beekeepers and that number is growing quickly, said Mr Al Ghamdi. Its estimated one million colonies produce an estimated 9,000 tonnes of honey annually.
“We have our local bees but last year we important 700,000 bees, mainly from Egypt,” he said. “Here the in Emirates they imported 450,000 bees. We are still importing and hopefully if we work well in the future we will be producing [bees] ourselves.”
This comes at a cost. Imported subspecies are breeding with the small, indigenous Apis mellifera jementica.
“Before we used to have two or three beekeepers in one location,” said Mr Al Ghamdi. “Now we have 100 beekeepers in one location and they are competing for the same source of nectar.
“These imported bees, they attack our local bees. Unfortunately, imported bees have replaced the local bees. In recent years because the genetics of our local bees have become affected.”
Mr Saeed welcomed the news of a regional association, noting that any regional framework to protect bees would be beneficial. “The most important thing in my village and the rural mountains is honey. Honey brings money.”
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
Scoreline:
Barcelona 2
Suarez 85', Messi 86'
Atletico Madrid 0
Red card: Diego Costa 28' (Atletico)
NO OTHER LAND
Director: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal
Stars: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham
Rating: 3.5/5
PSA DUBAI WORLD SERIES FINALS LINE-UP
Men’s:
Mohamed El Shorbagy (EGY)
Ali Farag (EGY)
Simon Rosner (GER)
Tarek Momen (EGY)
Miguel Angel Rodriguez (COL)
Gregory Gaultier (FRA)
Karim Abdel Gawad (EGY)
Nick Matthew (ENG)
Women's:
Nour El Sherbini (EGY)
Raneem El Welily (EGY)
Nour El Tayeb (EGY)
Laura Massaro (ENG)
Joelle King (NZE)
Camille Serme (FRA)
Nouran Gohar (EGY)
Sarah-Jane Perry (ENG)
If you go...
Fly from Dubai or Abu Dhabi to Chiang Mai in Thailand, via Bangkok, before taking a five-hour bus ride across the Laos border to Huay Xai. The land border crossing at Huay Xai is a well-trodden route, meaning entry is swift, though travellers should be aware of visa requirements for both countries.
Flights from Dubai start at Dh4,000 return with Emirates, while Etihad flights from Abu Dhabi start at Dh2,000. Local buses can be booked in Chiang Mai from around Dh50
Company%20profile
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Real estate tokenisation project
Dubai launched the pilot phase of its real estate tokenisation project last month.
The initiative focuses on converting real estate assets into digital tokens recorded on blockchain technology and helps in streamlining the process of buying, selling and investing, the Dubai Land Department said.
Dubai’s real estate tokenisation market is projected to reach Dh60 billion ($16.33 billion) by 2033, representing 7 per cent of the emirate’s total property transactions, according to the DLD.
