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This short article was published in World Energy #42 April 2019EricVerdeilSince 1987and the release of the Bruntland Report about Sustainable Development, concernsover climate change, biodiversity and other global threats have grown.Urbanization is at the core of global anxiety. Urban population, as recorded bythe UN, now reaches 4.2 billion, ie 55% of the total and is expected to grow by2,5 billion in 2050. This tremendous growth consumes huge level of resourcesand emits about 75% of world Green house gases. Cities are a major factor ofunsustainability, and the same time cities and urban dwellers increasingly sufferfrom global environmental changes. Gulf cities are no exception. Recordbreaking temperatures in Kuwait in 2016 highlighted the unbearable summer heatsGulf cities are facing and will have to cope with. Sea-level rise or extremerainy events also might affect the future of cities in this region.At the sametime, governments, international organizations and urban authorities alsoinsist that if cities are both the cause and the victims of global threats,they can also be the solution. Hence, cities have to be the place forimplementing solutions, and policies have to be designed at the level ofcities. The goals of these policies must be on the one side to reduce the urbanenvironmental footprint and on the other side to address the resilience ofcities. The New Urban Agenda adopted in Quito in 2016 underscored the necessityto understand sustainability as two-faceted: environmental preservation must gohand in hand with social inclusiveness. Masdar CityHow haveArab Cities and governments stepped into these directions? The continuous urbangrowth in this region of the world, in the face of harsh climatic conditions,has historically been made possible only through an extravagant use of cheapand widely available energy. To date, urban forms and consumption patterns are clearlyat odds with sustainable practices. Until recently there were few signs ofecological concerns in this part of the world. Arab Cities are not very presentin Cities networks that are at the forefront of environmental transition. Forinstance, the C40 Cities Climate Change Leadership Group include only threeArab Cities: Cairo, Amman and Dubai. Out of more than 1500 members, the localGovernments for Sustainability Network includes only 10 from the Middle Eastand North Africa, five of them from Turkey. Despite this low profile ininternational arenas, Gulf governments loudly and glitteringly advertise theircommitment to sustainable urban agendas. In the last ten years, governments haveactively promoted projects and plans staging their will to implementsustainable strategies. However their motivations are complex and, in addition,achievements, also impressive, have objective limitations and should not hidecontradictory trends.Masdar Cityrepresents the first and to date, the most telling expression of urbansustainability ambitions. The famous carbon-neutral city in the suburb of AbuDhabi, designed by Norman Foster, was launched in 2008. It uses brand newtechnologies in building design, energy management, renewable energy, water andwaste management, as well as innovative transportation technologies. It is intendedto become first a lab, and then a model for future urbanism in the region andbeyond. The project became indeed a showroom, as Abu Dhabi also managed toattract the headquarters of the International Renewable Agency and to developspectacular solar projects connected to the neighborhood. As cities in the Gulfregion compete against each other in order to attract investments, governmentshave designed projects that emulate Abi Dhabi vision. This is for instance thecase with the Saudi new towns of King Abdullah Economic Cities and above all,the latest Neom. In Dubai, several initiatives also express the will to competewith Masdar City, for instance the recent Sustainable City megaproject.These urbanprojects are increasingly integrated into wider strategies aiming at developingrenewable energy, as well as energy and natural resources efficiency schemes.All governments in this region have set up targets for RE production andregularly upgrade them. The UAE target 27% clean energy capacity in 2021. SaudiArabia targets 10% RE capacity in 2023 and 30% in 2030. The continuous decreaseof KWh price for solar technologies, both CSP and PV, as shown in the latestbids in Dubai and Saudi Arabia, renders these targets with reach. At the end 2018,the share of renewable energy has more than quadrupled in four years, from 210MW in 2014 to 867 MW. But it amounts to less than 1% of electricity capacity..Governmentshave also adopted ambitious schemes for energy efficiency. Green buildingcouncils have been established in almost every country in the region, whichhave adapted international standards for energy saving norms, such as LEED, tothe local conditions, such as the Pearl rating system in Abu Dhabi. Gulf stateshave also begun to roll back costly subsidies to fossil fuel, electricity andwater. Several cities are also building massive public transportation schemes.Dubai has been a pioneer, and now runs two metro lines. Similar projects areunder construction in Riyadh, while Abu Dhabi plans its own system. But thesetransportation means will at least in the short term mostly serve the foreignpopulation and not the nationals, who preferably use individual cars. Plans forelectrifying the automobile system are now actively prepared but they requesthuge additional generation capacities, and a complete revamping of the energydistribution system.Nevertheless,there are several differences in the narratives local authorities in thisregion use to justify they commitment to sustainable urbanization. In contrastto most world cities active in promoting ecological transition strategies, climatechange concerns are not prominent in the governments’ discourses. The clearestelement justifying the move is the necessity to prepare their economies for apost oil future. Economic diversification away from fossil energy is necessary.Clean techs and real estate stand at the core of the new green capitalism thatunfolds. In this respect, sustainable urbanization appears not as a response toglobal threats but rather as a concern for the political stability of thecountries and a new direction for economies. Abu Dhabi has taken the lead inthis orientation with Masdar and other related plans. Indeed, Masdar is notonly a local project but a company active in the field of renewable energy,also investing abroad and aiming at replicating its technological innovationsin other contexts. Prince Mohamed Ben Salman’s Saudi 2030 plans very openly seeksto emulate his rivals’ from the Persian Gulf shore. In theshort term, fiscal pressures added up more justification for this long termgoal of diversifying the economy. With the slump down of oil on internationalmarkets in 2014, most oil-based economies in the region have experienced fiscaltensions because oil revenues did not cover social expenses anymore. This affectedvery strongly the more populated states of Saudi Arabia or Oman where socialdemands are more heavily felt. Fiscal pressures played as a determinant factorin reforming electricity, fuel and water prices, which have been enforced inthe last four years. Havingstated the high ambitious Gulf governments express and their originalmotivations, it is nevertheless necessary to underscore the limitations ofthose schemes. Four points come to mind:Thevulnerability of these urban sustainable projects/markets to real estate cyclesremains high. The real estate crisis of 2008-09 administered a blow to MasdarCity and highlighted some of the weaknesses of this kind of projects. It wasdownsized and reprofiled as a more classical real estate project. Newdevelopments remain well below the initially foreseen pace. The project did notfulfill its ambitious technological promises, even if the achievements alreadyrepresent a strong departure from ordinary planning practices in the region. Itis far from being carban-neutral even if renewable energy and energy savingsallow for about 50% reduction in energy demand. Clearly, other sustainablemegaprojects also depend upon foreign investments and stand at risk of similarreal estate ups and downs. For instance, the delayed achievements of KAEC orNeom in Saudi Arabia illustrate their difficulty in convincing foreign investorsand the fierce competition between these cities and projects, where returns arenot determined only by technological advancements but also by politicalconditions.Thishighlights the political nature of arrangements regulating access toinfrastructure and resources in cities of this region and hence a certain levelof uncertainties regarding the capacity of local governments to maintain thedirection in the face of contradictory demands. For years, political legitimacyof the regimes in this part of the world has been linked to the provision ofmodern infrastructural services at cheap, in not free, price. As explained above,under fiscal pressures, governments have recently slashed subsidies for fuel,water or electricity. This effort needs to been pursued and expanded. Untilnow, no major protests have erupted over this issue, which however remainssensitive. Beyond that, urbanism remains car-centric and based on individualhousing for nationals. This kind of urbanization, despite all improvements andthe increasing capacity of renewable energy, remain unsustainable in the long runin terms of resource consumption (land, energy and water). The shortage ofavailable land while demand remain strong creates political tensions, as alreadyobserved in Kuwait. As stated by researcher Sharifa Alshalfan, because of the “limitson development including access to land and infrastructure, supply struggled tomeet the rising demand. In 2015, the Public Authority for Housing Welfare hadover 106,000 applications on the waitlist for housing, yet from the start ofthe housing programme in 1954 and until 2015, the state was only able toprovide 114,600 units. For the state to fulfil the current demand, it wouldneed to develop almost the same amount of housing units it had provided overthe past sixty years”. The sprawl of the low dense Kuwait City [MS1]&#160;connected by hundreds of kilometersof highways, creates huge traffic congestion. Anotherdimension of sustainability pertains to the huge degradation of localenvironment around the big cities of the region. The extensive transformationof the shoreline in the Emirates as well as in Saudi Arabia has deeplydevastated the local ecosystems, for instance the mangroves areas, also hurt byoil spills[S2]&#160;. The massive production ofdesalinated water produce as well very negative environmental outcomes. Most ofthe Persian Gulf desalination plants currently use thermal technology, which requiresmuch more energy than osmose reverse technology, and also emits a lot of GHG.In any case, for every liter of fresh water, 1,5 liter of brine (and variouschemical particles) is discharged into nearby water, destructing sea lifebecause the increase of salinity (+10-15 ppm) and of higher water temperature.The introduction of the newly improved reverse osmose technology fueled byrenewable solar energy, will gradually improve this dire situation, as the newTaweela unit installed by Abu Dhabi Water and Electricity Authority exhibits. The highershare of renewable energy, the improvement of energy intensity and of water usedo not mean that the use of resources will decrease in the future. Currently, acity like Dubai emits three times more GHG per capita than New York City. Onaverage, GCC countries exhibit levels of carbon emissions per GDP unit muchhigher than the world average and beyond East Asian and North Americancompetitors. This is even stronger when considering per capita average. Futuretrends anticipate increase in carbon intensity, from 6,96 cubic meter of carbonper capita in 2016 for the MENA region toward 7,5 in 2030 while world averagewould remain below 5. Thecontinuous growth of population and urban surfaces in the coming years meansthat the ecological footprint will continue to rise, even if at a reduced pace.Stricto sensu, urban sustainability in the Gulf remains an elusive promise. 