With Qatar’s recent developments in its capital and economic factor and after facing various obstacles the country has faced after the blockade from the neighboring countries and seeking its independence, Qatar decided that expanding capitalism and local produce would be one of the best options to rely on themselves. Looking into a text that shares the same concepts with Qatar’s current situation is the article “The Rise of Cheap Nature” by Jason Moore. This text focuses on introducing what cheap nature is in our world and it’s simply everything revolving around food, labor-power, raw materials and energy, as the text also emphasizes on increasing level of labor productivity and capitalism which is exactly what Qatar is going through for the past few years as a way to be more stable and independent. A question that this article made me raise about Qatar’s current citation is whether the damage that is caused towards the environment as a whole by cheap nature is being treated or payed attention too or not especially in a country like Qatar who has high level of pollution and prioritizes or pays more attention to capitalism in comparison to environmental issues that should be looked at.
The issue is not about whether Qatar is addressing or aware of these issues but the real problem is whether they are doing enough and coming up with solutions to balance out the damage caused. A possible solution to start with that could help and minimize the damage is that Qatar should come up with stricter laws and rules to implement on anything that revolves around cheap nature in order to regulate and minimize the damage done and as the article says the shifts that occur in the environment due to high productivity labor need taken into consideration and look at it form different views. It’s clear that Qatar’s focal point in the beginning was to expand and improve its capitalism as much as they can in order to profit from it and fulfill the needs of the society, although over time the high levels of pollution and its effect started showing more and harming the biodiversity system. Especially with Qatar’s well known weather due to its location where the temperature level is very high most of the time during the years which makes it even more difficult and complicated to deal with the ongoing environmental crisis and climate change. An example to look at is Baladna which is the largest local producer company in Qatar where it’s a part of Qatar’s plan on expanding it’s capitalism and labor, and most importantly stop relying on other countries to import any sort of products. In further research I would like to study the different approaches and techniques that Baldana and other similar companies use in order to minimize any harm to the environment and what is the government role in this situation.
