Go Green

The Arab Youth Center (AYC) has launched the training phase of the eighth edition of Youth Pitches, opening the initiative beyond the Arab world for the first time to empower young people from across the globe to contribute to international efforts on water security. Bringing together 30 projects and startups from 26 countries, this year’s edition provides training, mentorship and acceleration support to help young innovators develop practical responses to water scarcity, pollution and flood risks.

The Ministry of Climate Change and Environment (MOCCAE) has announced the launch of the 47th Planting Week, which begins tomorrow and runs until 8 November under the theme ‘Together, Let’s Plant the UAE’, in collaboration with the relevant authorities across the country. The Planting Week encourages individuals, families and institutions across the UAE to plant and nurture trees, fostering greater community engagement in environmental protection and contributing to a better quality of life.

The 13th edition of the Sharjah International Film Festival for Children and Youth, organised by FANN – Media Discovery Platform, hosted the Middle East premiere of the Thai film 'Gohan', which opened the festival's Green Carpet screenings at VOX Cinemas in City Centre Al Zahia. The screening attracted a large audience, with all tickets sold out.

BEEAH, the region's sustainability and innovation pioneer, has forged a strategic partnership with Soma Mater, expanding its sustainability advisory capabilities and specialized support for governments and businesses across the UAE and wider region.

House of Wisdom (HoW) in Sharjah won the “Sustain Sharjah Award for Tourist Destinations” category within the Sharjah International Travel and Tourism Forum Awards 2026 in recognition of its efforts to promote sustainability through cultural and educational programmes and community initiatives.

Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) signed three agreements with leading global entities during the 28th Water, Energy, Technology and Environment Exhibition (WETEX 2026).

The Al Jalila Foundation building has been awarded LEED Gold certification by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) under the LEED EBOM (Existing Buildings: Operations & Maintenance) rating system, one of the most widely recognized green building standards in the world. The certification evaluates building performance across a range of criteria, including energy efficiency, water consumption, indoor air quality, waste management, transportation impact, and occupant health, comfort, and satisfaction.

“On World Sustainability Day, the UAE’s journey towards Net Zero 2050 requires us to focus not only on how energy is produced, but also on how efficiently it is consumed. In a region where cooling is essential to daily life and economic growth, district cooling plays an important role in reducing energy demand and carbon emissions.

Ahead of the 2026 UN Water Conference, co-hosted by the UAE and Senegal in Abu Dhabi this December, Abdulla Balalaa, Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs for Energy and Sustainability, called for water resilience to become a central priority in economic and investment planning, emphasising the need to connect water, energy, technology, and finance to drive sustainable growth and strengthen economic competitiveness.

Sustainability in any system is mostly a matter of design. A building that needs constant air conditioning to be habitable is badly designed; one that stays cool because of its orientation and materials is well designed, and needs less willpower from the people in it. The same logic applies to a gaming market. Most countries built theirs first and added protections afterwards, which is why those protections lean so heavily on individual self-control. The UAE built the regulator before the first product, and the result is a market where several of the safeguards are structural. Here are five of them, what each does, and how they compare with open markets, using Play971, the country's licensed online sportsbook and casino, as the working example.