During summer, many of the residents of Jeddah migrate northward to the popular Egyptian tourist resort of Sharm El Sheikh. Tourists from cooler climes naturally seek warm seas and sun for their vacation. There is perhaps a touch of irony in the fact that Saudi tourists leave the ‘Bride of the Red Sea’ to visit a resort on the same seashore with much the same climate. There must be a reason for it.
Of course, there is. I would dearly love to take the tourism officials of the Jeddah Municipality, those in charge of environmental protection and marine science professors at our universities to bang their heads against the walls of Sharm El Sheikh. I would love to shame them for their indifference, their neglect of our coastline and the irreplaceable sea life that lies within a few meters of the Corniche.
Egyptians understand both the fragile nature and commercial value of their marine environment. They look after it and conserve it; we do not.
Building a tourist city is a commercial project. It succeeds or fails on its own terms. Nobody can be blamed for its failure. However, when the construction and operation of a private or commercial project causes total destruction of the environment around it, then blame and punishment is most certainly in order.
Saudi environmentalists have long warned of the disaster about to visit the coastline around Jeddah. If it has been mapped and recorded, then it is high time it was made public to force the officials who have been charged with the protection of our coasts to act. The destruction of the coastline, now going on right under our nose, must be stopped and stopped immediately.
If it has not been mapped and recorded, what is the reason or reasons?
Failure to do this means we will lose the opportunity to restore the coastline to its former glory and future generations will be the losers. We must resist the temptation to exploit the area for profit making at the expense of the environment. If development is to take place, it can and must be done with due regard for the God-given beauty of the Jeddah reefs.
From Abhur to the Gulf of Salman, there is hardly a kilometer which does not face a threat to the marine environment. In some places, pollution has reduced visibility under water to almost zero. In others, just below the surface there is nothing other than a rubbish heap.
There two major sources of damage — construction debris and sewage. The former comes from contractors who, when building close to the sea, find it far more economical to simply dump material into the water on the ‘out of sight, out of mind’ principle. Other projects involve dredging huge holes on the shoreline and breaking down the reef, causing widespread distribution of suffocating particles. This destroys the reef’s ability to regenerate itself and support its delicately balanced ecosystem. It will die a natural death.
It is quite remarkable that the owners of these projects choose to live next to the sea, probably to enjoy its beauty, yet destroy the very thing they have selected the site for. Maybe they don’t want to enjoy the sea; so why are they there and not further afield? There they can build all the walled enclosures and pleasure complexes they want. Saudi Arabia has a lot of empty space. At least spare the coast.
The destruction from sewage is a little less visible, more insidious and even more dangerous. Sewage is human waste. Sometimes you can see it, often you can smell it, as anyone who has traveled south of the King Faisal Naval Base in Jeddah will attest.
Dumped in the sea, it has several ways of damaging the environment. As sludge, it simply lies on coral and kills it. As it de-oxygenates the water, it suffocates fish and reduces the sea’s ability to deal with effluents. As particles, fish eat it, and humans eat fish. Truly, what you throw in the sea comes back as food and often hasn’t changed a lot. Think about it.
To see the real beauty of what is about to be destroyed, simply don a face mask and snorkel and put your face in the sea. You don’t even have to swim, just stand. Within a few meters of the Corniche, some of God’s most beautiful creatures swim shimmer through the living corals in a riot of color, unconscious of the threat that hangs over them. Some of these grow only a couple of centimeters a year.
The example set by Sharm El Sheikh is one the fathers of the Bride should emulate. On the beaches of Jeddah we see a long list of prohibited activities. Sadly, an injunction against desecrating the very beauty that gave the bride her dowry does not find a place in the list.
