And today’s reason we are an endangered species is passengers. Almost 19 million of whom came to here, to Dubai last year. The first time I landed in Dubai around 25 years ago, it was a desert with some high-rise buildings and a couple of resorts at the seaside. Then Burj Khalifa and hundreds of skyscrapers rose from the sand; it was a mirage in the desert, a vision of the city of the future. Today that vision is already a reality; the city is a financial and economic hub and one of the most visited cities in the world.

In the first quarter of 2025, the number of overnight visitors is already 5.3 million and it was off-season. So it is pretty easy to see that the number of visitors is exponentially increasing here, but not just here. Last year 1.4 billion people travelled for tourism on Planet Earth, which is an 11% increase compared to the year before. The tourism sector is booming, giving 10 percent of the global GDP, but also responsible for 10 percent of global pollution. 

And how does that affect Dubai? Well, last year all the visitors spent a staggering 180 billion US dollars here; growth and development is continuous. On the other hand, the weather is changing: the first part of this year was colder and wetter than usual, but now it is already above 40 degrees Celsius, close to 50 in some other parts of the UAE. So summer came early.

I do believe that travelling is a good thing, makes one smarter, more open and even more sensitive to topics like climate change, but all this holidaying is killing the very planet we would like to see and save. Can we stop this? Can we make tourism sustainable?