Jeddah Corniche has been taken away from the public and set apart for the so-called tourist and commercial projects posing a serious threat of environmental pollution, particularly to the marine ecology. The move by the municipality also portends the extinction of the rich marine flora and fauna in the Kingdom’s coastal belt. I wonder if our official environmental watchdog, the Presidency of Meteorological and Environmental Protection, has any role in the licensing and operations of such projects.
The municipal authority should not issue licenses to the Corniche projects without a green signal from the MEPA. This is to ensure that they do not wreak havoc with our coastal ecology.
The current tendency to lease the Corniche for commercial and tourist projects is reminiscent of the fate of the public gardens and lawns which once adorned Jeddah city. One official came up with a policy of allocating them to some private individuals that invited public disapproval. Those gardens were later converted to residential and commercial complexes.
One such ill-fated garden at the center of the district lies just across my house. It is only with deep anguish we the residents of the district watch the construction machines tearing the garden apart heartlessly for the commercial building which is to rise in the middle of the garden where we used to relax in the summer nights.
The same acts without foresight are being repeated at our beach. The public is cheated of the once-beautiful landscape of the Corniche to be leased for long years to private investors to build tourist or commercial projects. Except for the immensely rich people, the great majority of the citizens cannot even dream of entering these areas after they are developed.
They will have to remain outside the gate and be content with looking at the outer projections of the air conditioners. Nobody, of course, will deny these citizens the right to enjoy the loud music wafting out of the rooms of Arab, Indian, Indonesian or Filipino laborers working on these projects. They can also have the pleasure of watching the clotheslines on the balconies.
A few minutes in front of a new residential complex at the Corniche, named after a once-plenty beautiful sea bird in the neighborhood, will give you an idea of the ecological disaster awaiting our beach. The bird has left the Corniche following the massive ecological convulsions in the area.
My worst fear is that the fate of Jeddah gardens awaits all our natural bounties including mountains, valleys, deserts and the surrounding hills of Jeddah.
7 August 2002
