The recent normalization agreement between the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Israel opens a new era for Arab-Israeli cooperation. For sustainability enthusiasts like myself, it is clear that the UAE and Israel are likely to build a strong partnership and lead climate action in a region which nowadays resembles a land of sand and salt.

The Middle East is home to one of the harshest climates on Earth. In the last few years, summers in the Gulf have seen record-breaking temperatures exceeding 50 degrees Celsius. A high population growth rate, which increases the demand for water, results in a continuous decline in water availability in a region where water reserves per capita are already six times lower than the global average. With global heating unfolding, the situation is only going to get worse. The rising sea levels threaten low-lying cities of Kuwait, UAE and Egypt and high-intensity storms will cause disruptions in places where infrastructure was not designed with rainy weather in mind.

Strategies aimed at dealing with the climate crisis are conventionally categorized as mitigation and adaptation. Mitigation measures aim to stop the increase in global mean temperatures, while adaptation measures respond to the heating that has already occured. Both will be necessary in the Middle East, which needs to adapt more urgently than various other parts of the world.

The UAE and Israel are already regional heavyweights in entrepreneurship and technology. Both are listed as top two in the Middle East in Forbes’ 2018 Best Countries for Business and in the 2019 Global Innovation Index. And there are few sectors in which the two have as much in common as they do in green technology, namely renewable energy, agriculture and water supply.

Despite its oil wealth, the UAE has spearheaded the construction of large scale solar power facilities. An example is Shams 1, the largest concentrated solar power facility in the world. Israel, in turn, is home to Ketura Sun, the first utility-scale solar facility in the world with an entirely robotic, water-free cleaning system. The exchange of experiences and technologies will be crucial as both countries look to increase the share of renewable energy in their electricity mix. Implementation of autonomous cleaning systems will be of particular importance because of the reduced efficiency of photovoltaic panels due to the settling of dust and high humidity — both of which are common problems across the region.

One of the Israeli inventions whose presence is already widely implemented in the UAE is the modern drip irrigation system, which uses plastic tubes for the distribution of water. This technology aims to decrease water use; the next step to make agriculture more feasible in the region would be to reduce dependence on soil, which is a scarce resource here. Hence, hydroponics — a method of growing crops that uses water and liquid nutrients rather than soil as the growing medium — comes into play.

As surprising as it may sound, its implementation is well underway, and the UAE is betting big on this technology. Emirates Flight Catering has already invested in building the largest hydroponic facility in the world, and the Abu Dhabi Investment Office struck a deal with AeroFarms, a leading U.S. company, to construct the world’s biggest research and development facility in indoor vertical farming. AeroFarms focuses on the use of aeroponics, a technology that goes a step further than hydroponics, as it requires no water medium and roots are suspended in the air. Both of the techniques use a controlled indoor environment, thus protecting plants from excessive heat which is troublesome in the climate of the Arabian Peninsula.

The third important aspect of cooperation is likely to be water supply. Both countries rely heavily on desalination, which now accounts for 42 and 55 percent of the freshwater supply in the UAE and Israel, respectively. Numerous new projects are in the pipeline, especially in the UAE where demand for water has been steadily growing.

The supply of water and electricity, however, is only one side of the coin; conservation efforts may become a shared journey of the two countries. This insight emerges from my conversation with Noam Bedein, Executive Director of the Dead Sea Revival Project, who has been in touch with the office of the UAE’s Minister of State for Food Security with regards to hosting a joint event during the World Water Day in March 2021.

“We are arranging the first of its kind cultural event with the main cultural institutions in Abu Dhabi and Dubai presenting the Dead Sea cause as a world heritage site, a water treasure, that will become a bridge to the other national water treasures in the Middle East and North Africa,” said Bedein, demonstrating the clear link between the environmental constraints and opportunities faced by the two countries.

A similar attitude and optimism — even excitement — for future collaborations is present throughout the startup ecosystem. The two governments and societies have remained at diplomatic odds for a long time, but now the shared environmental struggles and entrepreneurial spirit are likely to bring them together at an accelerated pace.