The country's decision to help global conservation initiatives has come at a time when the efforts of conservationists are being restricted by financial constraints, according to a UAE conservationist.
Razan al Mubarak, managing director of the Emirates Wildlife Society, said humanity's understanding of environmental challenges was reaching new levels of sophistication.
But this also meant conservationists had to compete for scarce resources with campaigners for other sustainability causes.
Speaking in Barcelona at a congress of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) earlier this week, Ms Mubarak announced the launch of a ?25 million (Dh125m) conservation fund by Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces.
"In our vision, it is not just species but species conservation as a whole that is under threat and endangered," Ms Mubarak said, explaining the rationale behind the Mohammed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund, a private initiative of the Crown Prince.
"As higher-profile and larger priorities emerge, the funding... for conservation efforts across the board is not sufficient. Too often, species conservation is expected to benefit from the trickle down of our efforts to address the world's 'bigger picture' environmental issues - and it is not being addressed in its own right."
The announcement of the initiative came in a paper highlighting the challenges, including climate change, facing those working to save threatened species.
"More recently the meagre funds available globally for environmental protection are even further [stretched] with the realisation of climate change as the major environmental threat of our time," said the paper, available on the fund's www.mbzspeciesconservation.org website.
It said the growing need for conservationists to focus on policy and lobbying stretched further the resources available to people on the front lines of conservation initiatives.
Reduced funding was forcing them to choose their priorities carefully, and challenges seen as too hard to tackle were avoided.
"A worrying trend has started to emerge where some critically threatened species are being dismissed as beyond help and condemned to premature extinction," the paper said.
To reverse this trend, the fund will support "the on-the-ground champions of species conservation, the individuals in the villages, field stations, laboratories and homes that are dedicated to conserving their local threatened species".
IUCN keeps track of rare animals and plants via its "Red List" of endangered species. It has records of 41,000 species, of which more than a third are threatened.
Its updated list showed that some species recover with the right conservation efforts.
The Arabian oryx, for example, could soon be downgraded from endangered to vulnerable to extinction thanks to breeding and conservation.
Some extinct animals could have given scientists vital clues for developing medicines for humans. The Southern Gastric Brooding Frog in the Australian rainforest, which became extinct in the 1990s, may have held vital clues for researchers looking for a cure for peptic ulcers, for example. The reasons for the disappearance of the frog are unknown.
@Email:vtodorova@thenational.ae
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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.”
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Married Malala
Malala Yousafzai is enjoying married life, her father said.
The 24-year-old married Pakistan cricket executive Asser Malik last year in a small ceremony in the UK.
Ziauddin Yousafzai told The National his daughter was ‘very happy’ with her husband.
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DMZ facts
- The DMZ was created as a buffer after the 1950-53 Korean War.
- It runs 248 kilometers across the Korean Peninsula and is 4km wide.
- The zone is jointly overseen by the US-led United Nations Command and North Korea.
- It is littered with an estimated 2 million mines, tank traps, razor wire fences and guard posts.
- Donald Trump and Kim Jong-Un met at a building in Panmunjom, where an armistice was signed to stop the Korean War.
- Panmunjom is 52km north of the Korean capital Seoul and 147km south of Pyongyang, North Korea’s capital.
- Former US president Bill Clinton visited Panmunjom in 1993, while Ronald Reagan visited the DMZ in 1983, George W. Bush in 2002 and Barack Obama visited a nearby military camp in 2012.
- Mr Trump planned to visit in November 2017, but heavy fog that prevented his helicopter from landing.
Ferrari
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