Readers praise Sheikh Mohamed’s flydubai meeting and water calls

Readers have shared warm words about President Sheikh Mohamed’s recent meeting with flydubai staff, and fresh calls for water to be placed at the heart of Cop31 and December’s UN Water Conference in Abu Dhabi.

The president’s October meeting with the airline’s team, including pilot Smit Machchhar, drew praise in a letter to The National. One reader wrote that Sheikh Mohamed “has a sense of humour” and is “a man with a good heart whose country believes in peace with all,” adding that the UAE’s approach offers a model for the wider region.

Meanwhile, another reader argued that water is where most people first experience climate change, yet it remains the weakest part of global climate accounting. Unlike energy, which has targets, timetables and a stocktake, water has none of these, the letter said. It noted that while water appears in most national climate plans, investment remains insufficient and poorly coordinated.

The letter highlighted the World Bank’s estimate of the financing gap and said Cop31 in Antalya gives water a rare opening. Because every part of the energy transition — from hydrogen to data-centre cooling to agriculture — depends on water, a Cop that electrifies without securing water is building on sand. The practical test, the reader wrote, is a formal water line in the Cop31 outcome, with the financing gap named and a route to close it.

December’s UN Water Conference in Abu Dhabi would then become a delivery checkpoint. Climate policy has spent three decades learning to count carbon; it is time to count water with the same seriousness, the reader added.

The feedback comes as the UAE continues to push water and food security onto the global sustainability agenda ahead of the Abu Dhabi conference.