Dubai Municipality has unveiled a sweeping plan to make the city one of the greenest in the world by 2040. Marwan bin Ghalita, Director General of Dubai Municipality, presented the initiative at the Mohammed bin Rashid Leadership Forum, held at the Dubai World Trade Centre in front of roughly 1,000 government and private sector leaders.
Under the plan, the city will plant 3.5 million trees and expand its green coverage by 187 square kilometres, pushing green space per resident to 11 square metres. Officials say the goal is to raise quality of life while building resilience against the effects of climate change. Annual visits to parks and recreational facilities are projected to reach 95 million once the plan matures.
Alongside the tree-planting drive, the municipality has set a 2033 target for 40 percent of new buildings to use smart construction technologies, along with diverting 100 percent of municipal waste away from landfills. More than 577,000 food shipments are expected to be inspected annually as part of the same sustainability push.
A centrepiece infrastructure project tied to the plan is Tasreef, a roughly Dh30 billion scheme that will boost the city's rainwater drainage capacity by 700 percent, allowing it to handle more than 20 million cubic metres of rainwater per day. The project follows the severe rainstorms that hit the UAE in recent months and exposed gaps in urban drainage.
Officials noted that Dubai has been ranked the world's cleanest city for six consecutive years, and described the new programme as the next chapter in the emirate's long-running sustainable development strategy running through 2040.