As announced this week, 2023 will reinforce the UAE’s national commitment to building a cleaner and greener future Trees on Sir Bani Yas Island in Abu Dhabi. The National One afternoon, my mother handed me the branches of a beautiful plant and said: “This is Yas. It is a local plant and it smells beautiful.” It had been a busy week and I was thinking about how we, as a human race, are so caught up with our meetings, errands and obligations that we have lost touch with a core element of life – nature. That simple gesture by my mother allowed me a moment of reconnection. It also made me realise how integrated nature truly is in our society, and in many ways, our identity. In fact, that Yas plant is etymologically linked to the very tribe that I belong to – Bani Yas. The Bani Yas tribe dates back many centuries, and its people were known to have been deeply connected to the desert environment in which they lived. Rows of ghaf trees in Abu Dhabi. The National Many people in the UAE, both men and women, are named after animals, pearls, weather, or even geographical terrains. […]
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