In the United Arab Emirates, there is no shortage of artificial islands and skyscrapers, but there is a definite lack of water. The hostile climate is well known, and it seems more than a few people long to see a bit of more permanent greenery. That brings us to the plan of the local company National Advisor Bureau Limited, which intends to move an iceberg from Antarctica to a processing plant on the coast of Fujairah. Its chief spokesperson said that operations would begin in 2018, although there are still multiple legal details to be resolved...
A Plan Straight From Fiction
If this story sounds as if it were pulled from a work of fiction, you're not wrong. The novel Icebound by Dean Koontz explores the possibility of moving icebergs to combat droughts, and since its original publication was in 1976, let's say the idea is hardly new. The earliest reports date back to the 19th century, an era when sailors' audacity far exceeded their technological capability. It wasn't until the 1960s that the first successful attempts were seen, courtesy of the oil industry, which sought to keep those ice giants away from its platforms. The formal interest of Arab nations in this activity had its most important exposure in the late 1970s with the investments of Prince Mohammed bin Faisal Al Saud. Even NASA once thought moving icebergs was a good idea, and now it's the turn of National Advisor Bureau Limited, based in Masdar, Abu Dhabi.
The Towing Operation
Its director, Abdullah Mohammad Sulaiman Al Shehi, announced that in 2018 the first operations would begin to tow an iceberg from Antarctica (apparently in the vicinity of Heard Island) to a special processing plant on the coast of Fujairah. According to the company's multiple simulations, the entire journey would take about a year. The main objective is none other than obtaining water for general consumption. With a theoretical average of 75.6 billion liters of water, a single iceberg could provide water to a million people for five years (if my math doesn't fail me, that's about 41 liters per person per day).
While several earlier reports suggest that an iceberg couldn't travel beyond the equator, it's worth noting that 80% of its mass is underwater, and its natural color reflects sunlight, so it should be able to offer some resistance. The company also highlighted the tourism and ecological potential of iceberg relocation, but something tells me they're rushing. The Madrid Protocol and the Antarctic Treaty haven't disappeared, and at the same time it's hard to take seriously a company that imagines polar bears in Antarctica.
