Dubai's mission to become one of the great tourism destinations of the world took a backward step this week with the announcement that it will be opening its own version of SeaWorld as part of a complex of theme parks on Palm Jebel Ali.
The Middle Eastern playground city has a proud record of innovation and fearless investment in attractions for holidaymakers. Burj Al Arab, construction of which began back in 1994, was a massive gamble at the time: a self-proclaimed 7-star hotel in a city that at the time was little more than an import and re-export town built around its port industry.
The hotel could so easily have become a white elephant, had the world's super rich shunned its extravagant interior. Instead, it became an iconic landmark that told the world that Dubai was open for business as a luxury tourism destination.
Investment in Emirates Airline and the expansion of Dubai International Airport was also taking place during the early nineties. The idea of creating an aviation hub to rival Heathrow, Schipol or O'Hare seemed ludicrous at the time, but visionary with hindsight.
The current construction of Dubailand might not appeal to the more cultured tourist, but it amounts to an almost unimaginable transformation of barely habitable desert into a centre of entertainment that will create jobs, wealth and smiles on the faces of millions of young children.
All of these projects, along with Dubai's indoor ski slopes, gargantuan shopping malls, state-of-the-art public transport systems, ecological hotel resorts, and world-class sporting facilities belong in the present and the future of the global economic ecosystem.
SeaWorld belongs firmly in the past, and should be banished to remain there. Dubai does not need it, and tourists should not want it.
The business of wildlife conservation has made considerable strides in the past 30 years. There was a time when zoos and marine parks played an important role in protecting endangered species with breeding programmes.
Today, those breeding programmes take place in the habitat of the animals they are designed to protect. Dolphins are being nurtured in the seas off the West coast of Scotland; elephants and rhinos are being carefully and successfully managed in vast national parks in Southern Africa; tigers are no longer being hunted to extinction in India, and their numbers are increasing in safe zones.
Ironically, SeaWorld and its parent organisation Busch Entertainment Corporation, appears to agree. The business has its own conservation fund that runs myriad projects across the world - almost entirely involved in protecting wildlife in its natural habitat.
While this non-profit conservation enterprise is welcome, it feels a little like rich countries' obsession with carbon offset programmes - they are designed to assuage the guilt of those that do the most environmental damage as a substitute for stopping that damage in the first place.
The world is becoming richer in more ways than one. People have the money to travel to see wild animals in their natural habitats - be that on land or at sea. And the conservation of huge nature parks is improving to the benefit of the animals that roam them.
There is no future for bringing land or sea animals into captivity and making them perform for the public. Dubai is a city that constantly plans for the future, but allowing SeaWorld to open makes it look stuck in the past. Source
The Middle Eastern playground city has a proud record of innovation and fearless investment in attractions for holidaymakers. Burj Al Arab, construction of which began back in 1994, was a massive gamble at the time: a self-proclaimed 7-star hotel in a city that at the time was little more than an import and re-export town built around its port industry.
The hotel could so easily have become a white elephant, had the world's super rich shunned its extravagant interior. Instead, it became an iconic landmark that told the world that Dubai was open for business as a luxury tourism destination.
Investment in Emirates Airline and the expansion of Dubai International Airport was also taking place during the early nineties. The idea of creating an aviation hub to rival Heathrow, Schipol or O'Hare seemed ludicrous at the time, but visionary with hindsight.
The current construction of Dubailand might not appeal to the more cultured tourist, but it amounts to an almost unimaginable transformation of barely habitable desert into a centre of entertainment that will create jobs, wealth and smiles on the faces of millions of young children.
All of these projects, along with Dubai's indoor ski slopes, gargantuan shopping malls, state-of-the-art public transport systems, ecological hotel resorts, and world-class sporting facilities belong in the present and the future of the global economic ecosystem.
SeaWorld belongs firmly in the past, and should be banished to remain there. Dubai does not need it, and tourists should not want it.
The business of wildlife conservation has made considerable strides in the past 30 years. There was a time when zoos and marine parks played an important role in protecting endangered species with breeding programmes.
Today, those breeding programmes take place in the habitat of the animals they are designed to protect. Dolphins are being nurtured in the seas off the West coast of Scotland; elephants and rhinos are being carefully and successfully managed in vast national parks in Southern Africa; tigers are no longer being hunted to extinction in India, and their numbers are increasing in safe zones.
Ironically, SeaWorld and its parent organisation Busch Entertainment Corporation, appears to agree. The business has its own conservation fund that runs myriad projects across the world - almost entirely involved in protecting wildlife in its natural habitat.
While this non-profit conservation enterprise is welcome, it feels a little like rich countries' obsession with carbon offset programmes - they are designed to assuage the guilt of those that do the most environmental damage as a substitute for stopping that damage in the first place.
The world is becoming richer in more ways than one. People have the money to travel to see wild animals in their natural habitats - be that on land or at sea. And the conservation of huge nature parks is improving to the benefit of the animals that roam them.
There is no future for bringing land or sea animals into captivity and making them perform for the public. Dubai is a city that constantly plans for the future, but allowing SeaWorld to open makes it look stuck in the past. Source
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