THE MAN WHO CAME TO TURN THE DESERT GREEN
▶ David Pryce led a major project to plant tens of thousands of trees in the Abu Dhabi dunes, writes John Dennehy
When David Pryce arrived in the UAE in 1977, home was a cabin on a sand dune. He had no electricity or air conditioning and dinner was a chicken curry cooked over an old oil drum.
Mr Pryce, who was 20 at the time, was leading a project to plant tens of thousands of trees around the village of Ghayathi that was being built in Al Dhafra region of Abu Dhabi. The afforestation scheme was part of a huge project of tree planting initiated by the President, Sheikh Zayed, who was building permanent homes for the nomadic Bedouin in the desert.
Sheikh Zayed hoped the trees would provide shade, improve the appearance of the villages and make them more liveable.
It was also believed this green belt could cool the sun-punished area by a few degrees. And it was people such as Mr Pryce who got the project under way.
“It sounded like a good adventure,” he said. “But I didn’t know what I was getting myself into.”
The UAE was formed only a few years previously and people were pouring into the Emirates as oil revenue began to transform a country that needed schools, hospitals and houses.
More than four decades on, Mr Pryce recalls these pioneering days as if they happened yesterday. He was no stranger to the Arabian Gulf, having served with the UK’s Royal Fleet Auxiliary when he was 17.
But it was an association with a British landscaping company that changed his life.
“From the age of about 11, I worked for Verge and Embankment Beautification during my school holidays cutting grass, weeding and stone picking,” he said. “They called me up out of the blue to see if I wanted to plant a few trees.”
Mr Pryce, an Englishman, arrived in July 1977 and travelled to the camp 250 kilometres from Abu Dhabi a day after landing at the capital’s Al
Bateen Airport. The heat was searing, the sand endless and the job tough. There was no fridge or water supply and a basic shop many kilometres away stocked only flour and rice. “Rainbow Milk in a tin was popular,” he said.
Mr Pryce, now 63, led a team of about 30 Pakistani workers to plant more than 80,000 trees – many of them ghaf and cedar – around Ghayathi.
These new towns were being built on traditional routes used by the nomadic Bedouin to provide them with new homes. Ghayathi was nearing completion, with a clinic and school, when Mr Pryce arrived.
An article that year from trade magazine, Middle East
Economic Digest, outlined the challenges facing this type of afforestation project. It raised concerns about the long-term sustainability of the project chiefly because of the huge water use involved. Another issue was the scale – to alter the climate, millions of trees would be required.
“The forests sprouting in the UAE are intended to draw the Bedu to a less-nomadic life and will change the country’s climate,” it said. “The optimism is not shared by the consultants.”
Mr Pryce admits that a staggering number of trees would be needed to alter the climate. “Trees have a cooling effect but you need a great many. When you walk among them you feel cool but outside this belt the [scale] is not big enough.”
Another problem was trying to keep the camp supplied with fencing, concrete and other materials. This involved a long and painful drive every few weeks in a lorry without air conditioning to Mussaffah in Abu Dhabi, which even then was a labyrinthine industrial area. “There were no roads or accommodation and businesses there,” he says. “It was just sitting in the middle of the desert. And when it rained, it turned into a quagmire.”
Mr Pryce’s time in Al Dhafra is portrayed in a series of photographs. One shows him in flared 1970s jeans, while another shows the Pakistani workers posing like a victorious football team. Others underline the epic scale of the task. One photograph in particular shows the young trees swaying against the vast Abu Dhabi desert.
Mr Pryce left the project after four years and it was handed over to Abu Dhabi Municipality. He stayed in the UAE and revisited the camp last year. A few pieces of concrete and twisted metal poke through the sand but the desert has reclaimed the rest of what had been his home.
“I stood on the hill of the camp and wondered: ‘how did I live here for four years?’” Mr Pryce says. “It was hardship but, at 20, life is very different.”
Important to note was the increasing awareness by Abu Dhabi regarding the use of water. The authorities have shut off the water pumps to some plantations and many of the trees that remain are of the hardy ghaf variety that have sunk roots down to the water table, helping to prevent soil erosion.
Mr Pryce’s story is similar to that of tens of thousands of people who moved here in the early days. It was a freewheeling time when these pioneers played a vital role in building the country up and trying new things to make the UAE what it is today.
“As with many other people, it has been rough at times but if I ever leave the UAE, I shall always be looking back at the good times we all enjoyed,” he says.