Paper short abstract:

This paper scrutinizes the limitations of environmental citizenship among citizens and non-citizens in the Arab Gulf states, and examines distinctions between citizens and non-citizens and the depoliticising of environmental claims and national industrial legacies.

Paper long abstract:

This paper scrutinizes the limitations of environmental citizenship among citizens and non-citizens in the Arab Gulf states, with a focus on the United Arab Emirates (UAE). There are particularly heightened concerns about water scarcity, food security, marine pollution, and dependence on oil and gas industries and how states can address these challenges in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). Yet environmental citizenship in the Indian Ocean's Arabian littoral remains poorly understood both in terms of theoretical and grounded questions. It considers anthropological studies to trace how labor relations and discourses relating to citizenship, environment and sustainability enable or foreclose environmental reform in GCC countries, and examines distinctions between citizens and non-citizens and the depoliticising of environmental claims and national industrial legacies.