Emirati Local Communities as Balanced Ecosystems: Pilot Study for Individualistic Residents-Led Urban Agriculture Within Housing Clusters

Among the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, SDG15-Life on Land is a vital goal that calls for preserving terrestrial ecosystems in a way that contributes to maintaining the productivity of agricultural systems and greatly supports the mitigation of the harmful impacts of the climate change. Urban Agriculture (UA) seems a very promising, albeit still understudied, approach that could significantly contribute to achieving this goal. In the cities of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), such as Al Ain, widely underdeveloped semi-public open spaces have originated from the sprawling urban forms adopted in the designs of Emirati urban communities. It has been noticed almost in every Emirati urban community that the residents are individualistically embarking on UA activities, that vary in size and locations, in these vast shared semi-public spaces around which their housing plots are clustered. Through their UA activities the residents have managed to partially convert most of the semi-public spaces of their local communities into urban farms/gardens. This pilot study aims to better understand the magnitude and aspects of these individualistic residents-led UA activities through an exploratory case study method in the semi-public spaces of five typical housing clusters utilizing some relevant qualitative tools of map analysis, field observations, and semi-structured interviews with the residents. An urban community in Al Ain city was selected as a representative case study to undertake the research investigations. The results of this pilot exploratory research have led to better understanding of the processes behind the residents-led UA activities and indicated a considerable contribution to achieving SDG 15. This is believed to open the door for further research about UA as a potentially more productive community-led UA practice.