Going native: expert highlights benefits local plant life offer
UAE species use far less water and are better adapted to conditions than alien invaders, writes Daniel Bardsley
The country has for the past half century made great efforts to make the desert greener, with hundreds of thousands of hectares of forest planted.
For this and other initiatives, the Founding Father, Sheikh Zayed, was selected for major environmental accolades including the World Wide Fund for Nature’s Gold Panda award – its highest honour.
Today’s abundance of vegetation is not just in rural areas. It extends to the towns and cities where central reservations, roadside verges and parks and gardens offer an array of trees, shrubs and grass.
The plantations offer an echo, on a modest scale, of the lush vegetation that existed here thousands of years ago during periods when climatic conditions were more benign.
The greenery seen today has not grown without significant help, especially as many of the trees and shrubs planted here are exotics that require more water than native species.
As much as 80 per cent of the country’s water use is accounted for by greening projects, so it is no surprise that the UAE is one of the highest per capita users of water in the world.
This leads to an environmental price as it puts pressure on aquifers and requires carbon-intensive desalination.
But there is a way of easing the problem.
“We have a very good list of native plants that can do the same job in landscaping, but have been here for hundreds of thousands of years,” said Dr Taoufik Ksiksi, of UAE University.
Dr Ksiksi is the senior author of a scientific paper recently published in the Emirates Journal of Food and Agriculture. Landscaping with Native Plants in the UAE: A Review is a rallying cry for the increased use of native plants.
Together with colleagues Dr Shaijal Ppoyil and Dr Shyam Kurup, and researchers at the International Islamic University in Islamabad, Pakistan, Dr Hasnain Alam and Dr Jabar Khattak, Dr Ksiksi has highlighted the many benefits of planting native species.
He says part of the reason for writing the paper is to “raise awareness to the decision-makers” of the issue.
Native plants do not “bring any problems that we didn’t plan for”, as often happens with introduced plants.
Natives, the researchers say, are better at offering shade for wildlife, are well adapted to the soil and climate, offer food for herbivores and make parks and gardens look less artificial and reflect the country’s natural heritage.
Non-native species may also be difficult to control once established. A case in point concerns the tree Prosopis
juliflora, known commonly as mesquite.
“It’s created a lot of havoc. This is a very nasty species,” Dr Ksiksi says.
Also called ghweif, this Central American species was planted in Abu Dhabi emirate three decades ago and, mirroring similar introductions in other countries, is unpalatable to herbivores and has spread widely.
It also stifles the growth of native plants through chemicals in its leaves.
Considerable efforts have been made by authorities to control mesquite, but it has not proved easy to eliminate.
“It doesn’t have any use. The animals don’t want it; the insects don’t eat it,” Dr Ksiksi says. “It kills other species growing around it so it lowers the biodiversity in the desert.
“It’s only good for firewood. The problem is, if you try to kill it, it grows even stronger.”
Among the plants it has stifled is a related species,
Prosopis cineraria, which has the common name of ghaaf. Dr Ksiksi says it is greatly preferable that this tree is planted instead of mesquite.
“It has a high level of water efficiency and it allows other species to grow,” he says. “It’s very good for biodiversity.”
The paper documents many of the ways in which the authorities have tried to encourage the planting of native species.
The Abu Dhabi 2030 urban master plan encourages native, drought-tolerant and salt-tolerant species, while more than a third of the species in ornamental projects between 2010 and 2012 were natives. The Abu Dhabi Public
Realm Design Manual says drought-tolerant local species should make up at least 80 per cent of landscaped areas.
Habiba Al Marashi, chairwoman of the Emirates Environmental Group, is also keen to see more native species.
“There’s more conscious decisions taking place and more planting of indigenous plants,” Ms Al Marashi says.
A full analysis of how many of the plants in landscaped areas are native has yet to be completed.
A strategy favoured by Dr Ksiksi is planting cacti, which he says can compete with introduced species. He would also like to see efforts to remove non-natives redoubled.
One of his postgraduate students has identified hotspots where non-native species are concentrated. These could become target areas for removal, although completely eliminating them is impossible.
“It’s not easy to get rid of them, so we have to live with them and manage them,” Dr Ksiksi says.