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UAE: How concerts and live events are becoming more eco-friendly

UAE: How concerts and live events are becoming more eco-friendly

New partnership between Emirates Nature-WWF and Live Nation Middle East aims to deliver more sustainable events



Reuters

Reuters

Published: Sat 21 May 2022, 6:01 PM

Last updated: Sat 21 May 2022, 6:06 PM

UAE-based entities have launched a first-of-its-kind initiative to boost sustainability of concert tours and live entertainment events.

The new partnership between Emirates Nature-WWF and Live Nation Middle East will see increased focus on all aspects of live events, i.e., flights, ground transportation, hotel accommodation, merchandise, venue operations, among others.

Laila Mostafa Abdullatif, Director General, Emirates Nature-WWF, said the partnership aims to transform the live entertainment sector and deliver more sustainable events in the UAE and globally.

“It is critical to the future enjoyment of live music and the betterment of people and the planet. We look forward to facilitating our joint ambition to reduce carbon footprint and be the catalyst for market transformation in the live music event industry,” Laila told Khaleej Times.

Earlier this month, a pilot study was done during Maroon 5 concert by following best green practices. So, Maroon 5 band members flew onboard Etihad Airways’ all-new A350 aircraft, which offers 25 per cent reduction in fuel burn and emissions. On the road, they travelled in all-electric cars – a dedicated fleet of Porsche Taycans. Etihad Arena, the official venue partner, is in the natural habitat of Yas Island and integrates various energy and water efficient building systems. Eco-rooms and reduced plastic items were provided by The W Hotel, where Maroon 5 stayed. Now, with the data collected from the study, a science-based guideline will be created to ensure sustainable practices for upcoming concerts and tours.

“It was the first time the entire ecosystem of a live performance has been examined from flights to cars, hotels and then finally to the performance. We have had incredible support from pioneering businesses from our pilot study – Etihad Airways, Porsche Centre Abu Dhabi & Al Ain, Ali & Sons, Etihad Arena and The W Hotel who have already started helping us pave the way to in this study on transforming the live entertainment industry. Their partnerships will aid in reducing the carbon footprint of live events,” she said.

Laila underlined the initiative is in line with the UAE’s target to reduce carbon footprint by 23 per cent by 2030.

“Further, with the UAE being the host for the forthcoming COP 28, the project will provide a case study of the behaviour changes required to create standards in wider market transformation of the event industry and start a new chapter in sustainable live performances sector and beyond.”

Live Nation recently completed a global sustainability study, which found that 82 per cent of live musicgoers strive to maintain an environmentally sustainable lifestyle.

James Craven, president, Live Nation Middle East, said: “This initiative will give us the data we need in order to provide artists and fans with more sustainable options for touring going forwards and will build on the global commitments Live Nation has made. With concerns around climate change never more at the forefront of our minds, it is crucial that we all look at where we can make an impact,” Craven noted.

Joint efforts of Live Nation’s Green Touring Programme and the Emirates Nature-WWF Green Entertainment Initiative will now extend to other live entertainment events.

Photo 5: Etihad Arena, the venue on Yas Island, includes several sustainable design strategies.

Laila said: “It will be carried out in partnership with Live Nation and other green supporters. As for concerts, we have a very exciting line-up of renowned artist live performances. Our goal is to transform the live entertainment industry across the Emirates, regionally and beyond. Therefore, there will be a variety of venue operators, airlines, on-ground transportation that we will be looking to partner with.”

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She added that such an initiative is the need of the hour.

“The time for transformation is now. Consumers locally and globally are motivated to be more environmentally conscious and exercising their power and voice through the products they buy and the events they attend. Established artists are also publicly stating their requirements for cleaner concerts. Climate change is at the centre of the industry’s narrative and the world must be ready,” Laila underlined.

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President Sheikh Mohamed at UAE sports events over the years – in pictures

President Sheikh Mohamed at UAE sports events over the years - in pictures

President Sheikh Mohamed has been a regular visitor at sporting events across the UAE over the years. From football to Formula One, Sheikh Mohamed has shown keen interest in a variety of sports.

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One of the most memorable visits came last year, when the world witnessed a dramatic conclusion to the Formula One season at the Etihad Airways Abu Dhabi Grand Prix in December.

There, Max Verstappen clinched the chequered flag and the season’s championship after the race was reduced to a one-lap showdown following a crash five laps from the end and a safety car deployment.

The Red Bull driver aced the one-lap dash and snatched the title from the hands of Mercedes rival Lewis Hamilton. It was an unforgettable evening for those present at the Yas Marina Circuit, including Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Vice President and Ruler of Dubai, who attended the race with Sheikh Mohamed.

Sheikh Mohamed has also attended the President’s Cup and Pro League Cup football matches. In the picture gallery above, you can see the sporting events and interactions Sheikh Mohamed has had.

Updated: May 17, 2022, 9:03 AM

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UAE summons Israeli ambassador to protest against events at Al-Aqsa Mosque

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Dubai: Reem bint Ebrahim Al Hashimy, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) minister of state for International Cooperation (MoFAIC), has summoned Amir Hayek, Israeli ambassador to the UAE, to “strongly protest and denounce the events taking place in Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque,” according to a MoFAIC statement on Tuesday.

The UAE protested the “attacks on civilians and incursions into holy places that resulted in the injury of a number of civilians,” the statement said.

Clashes erupt at Jerusalem Al Aqsa mosque, 152 Palestinians hurt

Al Hashimy stressed the need to immediately stop these events, provide full protection for worshipers, respect the right of Palestinians to practice their religious rites, and halt any practices that violate the sanctity of Al-Aqsa Mosque, it added.

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Israeli police seen standing over Palestinian detainees in al-Aqsa Mosque’s prayer hall on Friday, April 15. Photo: Screengrab

The UAE is calling for a return to serious negotiations aimed at achieving a just and comprehensive peace and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital.

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UAE summons Israeli ambassador to protest against events at Al-Aqsa Mosque

UAE summons Israeli ambassador to protest against events at Al-Aqsa Mosque



ANI |
Updated:
Apr 20, 2022 05:39 IST

Dubai [UAE], April 20 (ANI/Xinhua): Reem bint Ebrahim Al Hashimy, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) minister of state for International Cooperation (MoFAIC), has summoned Amir Hayek, Israeli ambassador to the UAE, to “strongly protest and denounce the events taking place in Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque,” according to a MoFAIC statement on Tuesday.

The UAE protested the “attacks on civilians and incursions into holy places that resulted in the injury of a number of civilians,” the statement said.
Al Hashimy stressed the need to immediately stop these events, provide full protection for worshipers, respect the right of Palestinians to practice their religious rites, and halt any practices that violate the sanctity of Al-Aqsa Mosque, it added.
The UAE is calling for a return to serious negotiations aimed at achieving a just and comprehensive peace and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital. (ANI/Xinhua)

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Limelight Platform Partners Seed Group with to Transform UAE Events with Experiential Marketing and Spatial Analytics

TORONTO and DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES, March 8, 2022 /CNW/ – Seed Group, a company of the Private Office of His Highness Sheikh Saeed bin Ahmed Al Maktoum, has entered into a strategic partnership with Canada-based Limelight Platform, an experiential MarTech solution that leverages its innovative SaaS (Software as a Service) platform to help global brands deliver memorable consumer experiences and measure the impact of their marketing campaigns and events in real-time.

As part of the new partnership, Seed Group will support Limelight Platform’s expansion into the Middle East by helping it connect with top decision makers in the UAE’s public and private sectors and market its award-winning SaaS platform to businesses in the region. The partnership comes at a time when the UAE government is constantly striving to deploy the latest infrastructure and innovations, aiming to continue to maintain its position as one of the smartest and most connected cities in the world.

Created by marketers for marketers, Limelight Platform uses its world-class technology to help brands and agencies better understand their customers’ experiences at events or measure the impact of their marketing campaigns by collecting and analyzing real-time data.

In 2021, Limelight acquired Meshh, a SaaS platform that specializes in spatial analytics and research and provides location-based intelligence and interaction solutions to help agencies and brands gain a more in-depth understanding of visitor behavior at live events and exhibitions by passively capturing footfall, engagement, dwell time, impacts, and journey paths in a GDPR-compliant way. The insights gained from this technology will be used to improve event planning and space design, inform sponsors and advertisers about the exposure their brand received throughout an event, and demonstrate ROI to relevant stakeholders and commercial partners.

Hisham Al Gurg, CEO of the Seed Group and the Private Office of Sheikh Saeed bin Ahmed Al Maktoum, said, “Bringing experiential marketing technology to the UAE will transform and innovate the country’s events industry, opening new avenues for GDPR-compliant data collection. With the help of Limelight, brands and agencies in the region will be able to benefit from its automated, data-driven experiential marketing insights to gain a more in-depth understanding of customer experiences and interactions at events.”

Terry Foster, CEO of Limelight Platform, said, “Being represented by the Seed Group is a unique opportunity for us to grow our network in the Middle East, especially in Dubai. We have seen the many benefits our clients have gained from our technology, and are excited about our new partnership to bring our consumer data capture technology for live events to the UAE. I believe our cloud-based platform will truly be an asset for the UAE’s events industry as it helps brands and agencies prove and improve the ROI of their live marketing activities and gain accurate insight into consumer behavior at events in real-time, which will help them improve future campaigns and events.”

Seed Group is renowned for its diverse portfolio of operations in technology, tourism, hospitality, real estate, and the health care sectors across the GCC region. Over the past 16 years, it has formed several strategic partnerships with leading companies from around the world that offer innovative products and services to enhance their presence in the Middle East and North Africa market and transform various sectors.

Limelight’s new partnership with the Seed Group will ensure access to one of the world’s most diverse and fastest growing economies, which is also home to some of the most prominent industry and entertainment events and exhibitions.

About Limelight Platform

Limelight is a SaaS platform that helps global brands deliver memorable consumer experiences and measure the impact of their experiential marketing while dramatically improving results for companies like BMW, Porsche, RBC, Nationwide, Mazda, Kellogg’s and General Mills. Limelight acquired Meshh, a SaaS platform that provides world class, location-based intelligence and interaction solutions, in June 2021. The technology helps event organisers, venues and brands measure engagement and interaction in their physical spaces. Delivering insights to marketers about how customers behave in real world environments so they can deliver richer, more immersive experiences. Meshh is used by forward thinking companies like Formula 1, Live Nation, Verizon, Ford, Sky Retail, NASCAR and Relo Metrics. For more information, visit www.limelightplatform.com.

About Seed Group

Over the past 16 years, Seed Group has formed strategic alliances with leading global companies representing diverse regions and industries. These companies have propelled their business interests and goals in the Middle East and North Africa region through the support and strong base of regional connections of the Seed Group. The Group’s goal is to create mutually beneficial partnerships with multinational organisations and to accelerate their sustainable market entry and presence within the MENA region. Seed Group has been a key point in the success of all its partners in the region, helping them reach their target customers and accelerate their businesses. The Private Office was established by Sheikh Saeed bin Ahmed Al Maktoum to directly invest in or assist potential business opportunities in the region, which meet The Private Office’s criteria. For more information, visit www.seedgroup.com.

SOURCE Limelight Platforms Inc

For further information: Limelight Platform Media Contact: Ian Richardson, +1 416 278 9139, [email protected] ; Seed Group Media Contact: Nomarie Jean Lacsamana, +971 4 373 5068, [email protected]

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Global events to push Turkey, UAE to cooperate in East Med, Libya

Global events to push Turkey, UAE to cooperate in East Med, Libya

The recent changes in the geopolitical situation and a United States that is less committed to the region could push Turkey and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to work together and focus on pragmatic cooperation in the Libyan crisis and the Eastern Mediterranean, experts said.

Converging interests have driven regional power shifts in the Middle East, mainly led by Turkey and the UAE. Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan (MBZ) visited Turkey for the first time since 2012 in November while President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan paid a visit to the UAE last week.

“Turkey is carrying out normalization processes with actors that emerged in a previous period as an opposition bloc but it can be seen that this process is much more accelerated and moving in a different direction with the UAE,” Mustafa Yetim, a Gulf studies expert at the Ankara-based think tank, Center for Middle Eastern Strategic Studies (ORSAM), said. “This process can have a positive impact on actors that previously were against Turkey and in which the UAE had a significant position, and the crises in which these actors were involved.”

Vişne Korkmaz of Nişantaşı University, on the other hand, underlined that although it is voiced that the UAE is reviewing its foreign policy since the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) normalization with Qatar at Al-Ula, she thinks Abu Dhabi has not given up on its “little Sparta” policy.

Saying that although the UAE is described as a small state, Kormaz said that the country showed that even small states can pursue expansionist policies and that the UAE has built a capacity for this that it still holds.

“However the UAE has seen the limits of the policy it has pursued since 2014,” Korkmaz said, pointing to its Yemen policy as well as its rivals such as Qatar taking greater roles in the region, of which Afghanistan is an example. She pointed further to the geopolitical conjuncture as a reason for these limits and highlighted that the U.S.’ regional policies and its stance affect the country. The U.S. is currently in no position to pursue a policy of polarizing regional states with high capacities, she said.

After years of looking abroad for answers, countries in the Middle East now appear to instead be talking to each other to find solutions following two decades defined by war and political upheaval.

The diplomatic maneuvering signals a growing realization across the region that America’s interest is moving elsewhere and that now is the time for negotiations that were unthinkable just a year ago.

And with the border-locking chaos of the coronavirus pandemic largely behind them, Mideast leaders are now shuffling, talking face-to-face amid a flurry of diplomatic meetings, seemingly eager to hedge their bets.

An intra-Gulf feud that saw Qatar boycotted for years by four Arab countries ended in January at Al-Ula.

Stressing that one of the main and most critical areas in which Turkey and the UAE can cooperate is the Libya issue, Yetim said: “The Libyan issue is critical in that it represents Turkey’s last circle and breakup from regional isolation efforts.” He reminded that the UAE’s involvement in Libya through proxies constituted a peak in the crisis between Ankara and Abu Dhabi and indicated that the UAE could contribute economically and politically to Libya’s restructuring and overcoming the dual structure in Libya through diplomacy.

“We do not have the Libya of 2014, which polarized countries such as Turkey, the UAE, Qatar and Egypt. The U.S.’ main goal seems to be to limit Russia’s presence in the Eastern Mediterranean. Actors such as the UAE and Russia, which supported (eastern-based putschist Gen. Khalifa) Haftar after 2014, have seen that Haftar neither possesses the military nor political power to control all of Libya,” Korkmaz said. Saying that Turkey has good relations with both of the main candidates currently – former Interior Minister Fathi Bashagha and current Interim Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Mohammed Dbeibah, she underlined that the UAE is similarly a pragmatic country. “Therefore, all these factors can lead Turkey and the UAE to act more in coordination in establishing stability in Libya.”

“In the Libyan crisis, the UAE has left its quasi automatic anti-Turkey stance and preferred dialogue and diplomacy after testing Turkey’s resistance in Libya and seeing Turkey’s maritime and military deal with Libya as well as the limitations of the claims of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Israel, Greece and the Greek Cypriot administration in the Eastern Mediterranean,” Yetim said. He added that the EastMed project, a planned subsea pipeline to provide natural gas from the Eastern Mediterranean to Europe and a project strongly opposed by Turkey, which entered a difficult phase was another factor for the UAE’s change in its policy.

“The fact that normalization in the Eastern Mediterranean such as between Turkey and the UAE, Egypt and Israel has started, shows that regional actors pursuing an anti-Turkey policy, did not gain what they sought from this policy. The EastMed (project) did not take place since Turkey is preserving its civilian as well as military capacities, which allow its presence in the Eastern Mediterranean,” Korkmaz said.

She further reminded that the U.S. withdrew its support from the pipeline project. “Since it was already an economically unfeasible project and was born dead due to the impossibility of realizing it without Turkey, the U.S. seems to have withdrawn from it.” Korkmaz also said that in the midst of tensions with Russia due to Ukraine, Washington is aware of the position Ankara holds in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea.

“Knowing that the problems between regional countries are not ideological, the U.S. has played a facilitating role for Turkey, Egypt, Israel and the UAE to find a win-win ground.”

Turkey wants to see energy as an incentive for political resolution on the island and peace in the wider Mediterranean basin, not a catalyst for further tensions.

“At this point, it can be said that there is a lack of interest from global actors in the EastMed project, which had high costs but was supported to politically isolate Turkey, and that the regional anti-Turkey bloc has broken down,” Yetim said.

Similarly, Yetim emphasized that Turkey is in a stronger position in the Eastern Mediterranean in the face of the Greece-Greek Cypriot duo, which was supported by the U.S., European Union, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Israel and the UAE.

“Within this scope, Turkey being in a normalization process with Israel and voicing that it can play a role in transferring Israeli energy sources to international markets could lead to the UAE supporting this process as Abu Dhabi also started diplomatic relations with Israel with the Abraham Accords.” However this will not come at the cost of the Palestinian issue, he said.

“One of the most sensitive areas in this regard is Libya. Everyone accepts that the next process in Libya cannot be thought separate from Turkey,” Korkmaz said, indicating that all regional countries agree on the need for a healthy transition in the North African country as well as elections.

Syrian civil war

Once ostracized autocracies such as Bashar Assad in Syria, and shunned former top figures such as Moammar Gadhafi’s son in Libya, are back in the political arena amid the still-smoldering ruins of the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings. The Arab countries’ aim to normalize with Assad could pose another challenge to enhanced relations with Turkey as Ankara opposes reestablishing ties with the dictator.

Syria’s Assad has clawed his way back from the precipice. Though the northwestern Syrian province of Idlib remains under the control of opposition forces, Assad controls the rest of the country.

Speaking on the issue, Yetim said on the other side that there is not sufficient data to say that the Syrian issue is a priority in Turkey-UAE relations.

“Turkey is carrying out the process on Syria with Iran and Russia, which are already active players on the field. On the other hand, there is a possibility of normalization with the Assad regime by regional countries such as Jordan or GCC actors such as Oman and the UAE and other steps by these regional countries in this regard can be expected this year.”

He indicated that the issues of terrorism, the Idlib-centered migration problem and the position of the Syrian opposition are the main concerns of Turkey and that the UAE playing a contributing role to ties between the Assad regime and Ankara at a time of normalization could be a positive development.