Expo 2020 Dubai will be a defining event
The mega-event’s site will display what a sustainable future for humanity could look like
Expos can change cities. By drawing large numbers of international visitors and inviting countries to showcase the very best their societies have to offer, they introduce new possibilities to the local landscape. And when the party is over, the attendees take what they have learnt back home with them.
This is most aptly summed up in the theme of Expo 2020 Dubai: “Connecting minds, creating the future.”
The mega-event that for the past eight years has been a vision, a blueprint and then a work in progress, is finally reality, ready for the world stage.
On Thursday night, as the opening ceremony got under way, viewers witnessed the scope of what a post-pandemic future could hold. In addition to those who attended the ceremony in person, people all over the UAE and abroad were able to witness the event from their homes through a live broadcast.
Over the next 182 days, Expo 2020 Dubai will focus on the sub-themes of opportunity, mobility and sustainability. Visitors will no doubt get a glimpse of the kind of world we all want to live in, as sustainability becomes a driving force in global development and climate action becomes an increasingly non-negotiable priority for the international community.
The Expo site will display what this sustainable future could look like.
It is larger than 600 football pitches, and a testament to how seriously the UAE, as the country reaches its 50th anniversary, takes the ideals the event represents.
As Dr Nawal Al-Hosany, the UAE’s representative at the International Renewable Energy Agency, wrote in The National last month: “[Expo] is set to be a manifestation of the words of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai: ‘The future belongs to those who can imagine it, design it and execute it’.”
Those visitors coming to the UAE for the first time to attend the Expo will also have an opportunity to also tour some of the UAE’s globally renowned landmarks, including the famed Burj Khalifa and the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque, one of the largest places of worship in the world. They can visit some of the conservation areas developed in recent years, including Abu Dhabi’s mangrove parks, which have become havens for avian and marine species.
Over the next six months, visitors from around the planet – and also from within the UAE – will get a chance to marvel at how seamlessly Dubai has been able to bring together a vision of sustainability and technology, harnessing the power of imagination and addressing the needs of the future.
It has been a year of introspection worldwide, as societies ask themselves how best to chart a path through not only the pandemic, but an era of less certainty, greater complexity.
In Dubai, the world will come together to have a good time, but also to ponder these issues as one. When it is over, the hope is that people will walk away with greater confidence in the future we can all build together.