The Center for International and Regional Studies at SFS-Q hosted the first of a monthly dialogue series with a presentation by post-doctoral fellow Mari Luomi who shared her research on environmental sustainability in the region.

“The regional governments’ dependence on fossil fuels, fossil fuel revenues, and the social contracts based on these revenues produces unsustainability,” she argued. The ‘business-as-usual’ of Gulf economies and societies is increasingly challenged by a number of environmental and natural resource-related pressures, she said. “The most urgent ones originate from within the states: fossil fuel dependence, soaring population, economic growth, high per capita consumption and waste of natural resources, and social contracts that include abundant fuel and utility price subsidies,” Luomi said, adding: “We live in a constructed illusion of plentiful and limitless natural resources.”

Read more about Luomi's presentation at Gulf Times.