Eco properties

What is an eco property exactly? I see an awful lot of advertising claiming this or that property development is “green property development” or "eco friendly property development” or “sustainable” or “environmentally friendly, or any number of similar sounding buzzwords.” Yet – on closer inspection, this seems rarely to be the case. I personally find it impossible to understand how a new development in Dubai could possibly be eco-friendly when it is a luxury hotel built on a fake island created by hard dredging sand from the sea bed and piling into a new island. The destruction of all wildlife in the process cannot possibly be eco-friendly.

I will take Dubai as an example. Many of the luxury hotels on the World Islands development are reported to be “green,” yet the Dubai government has consistently avoided answering questions as to the environmental damage caused by building these Islands in the first place. Dubai recently suffered a red algae bloom along their coastline, which meant having all the beaches closed for the duration. They consistently deny this is in any way related to creating 300 artificial islands by dredging the sea bed and pouring millions of tons of sand into a pile.

Thank goodness for the financial crisis say I. They have already had to redo the breakwaters twice as the water inside became completely stagnant and every living creature near the development has been killed. Yet – still it was being billed as an “eco development.” Work on the development is currently at a dead stop, so maybe Mother Nature will reclaim what is hers? Who knows?

Another so-called “sustainable development,” in Dubai is the Tiger Woods Golf course. They have gone to the enormous expense and trouble of importing 480,000 shrubs, and 30,000 mature trees from Thailand, Australia, South Africa, the US, India and Saudi Arabia. To build a “sustainable development.”

None of the imported plants are indigenous to the region – and no one has even looked at the possible environmental impact of planting this many foreign plants – none of which would grow naturally in the desert. “Sustainable?” Pull the other one. Oh, I almost forgot the 7.5 million square feet of lakes being created by dynamiting the ground; the 30 hectares of grass being imported from Georgia and the 13,000 cubic meters a day of Reverse Osmosis water being pumped from 18 miles away to irrigate the courses.

I don't really see how any of this could be described as eco property. In fact, the words, “Environmental disaster waiting to happen,”  keep on wandering across my brain.