In trying to situate the environmental consciousness of Qatar, it is important to understand the historical human-nature relationship within the country, both as separate and intertwined entities, and the trajectory of “modernity” set in motion by the discovery of oil. The harm caused to the environment of Qatar locally and of the world globally as a whole through oil extraction is directly proportional to the changing relationship and antagonism between “humans” and “nature”. This false binary was exacerbated in the move from a pearl-diving industry to an oil and fossil-fuel based industry. In contradistinction to Cronon’s description of wilderness as being “in the presence of something irreducibly nonhuman, something profoundly Other than yourself,” (Cronon, 2) the pearl-diving industry, though still exploitative, did not place the spheres of human life and aquatic life at odds with one another, but rather as interdependent and of one joint subjectivity.
As this shifted with the advent of oil, “nature” became an Other to be consumed and perceived from the outside, and the central focus became human subjectivity. The same sea within which pearl-divers dove to earn their livelihood is now encountered through paid trips on boats and ships that create distance between humans and the sea. This change is described by Cronon when he says, “as more and more tourists sought out the wilderness as a spectacle to be looked at and enjoyed for its great beauty, the sublime in effect became domesticated.” (Cronon, 6) Today, these “natural” aspects of Qatar have become tourist destinations, often involving paid experiences such as in the mangroves or the sand dunes. What were these spaces like before the discovery of oil? When “nature” becomes something that you can opt-in and opt-out of, and there is an understanding of it as an outward aspect removed from your reality, this antagonism gets worse. On a daily basis, the encounter with the nature for most people in Doha is with trees and plants and pets. This nature is not othered in the same way that the mangroves or the sand dunes are.
I have often felt, whenever I am atop a sand dune, that I am observing wilderness that is untouched by human activity, and so it is a pure and pristine, “remote from humanity and untouched by our common past.” (Cronon, 13) But this is disproven by the very fact that I am present in this space, and that there is a petrol-fueled four wheeler that has driven me here. Why do I feel this way about this vast expanse of sand but not the tree in my front yard? Cronon would say that “we need to honor the Other within and the Other next door as much as we do the exotic Other that lives far away—a lesson that applies as much to people as it does to (other) natural things.” (Cronon, 19) I fall into the trap of human subjectivity and am inconsistent in my Other-ization of “nature” because I feel that the past and historical aspect of the sand dunes is more rooted in a “real” nature than a tree that was planted within my lifetime.
This gulf-past then blends into the gulf-present.
