The illusion of safe environment

The air is different this week. Heavy, ochre, thick with the weight of unseen lands. As a ghostly tide of dust blankets Muscat and much of North Oman, reducing the sky to a choking haze, we witness the tangible reality of a shifting environment. The dust is not just Ghubar, a passing inconvenience; this is a transboundary whisper of climate chaos, fine particulate matter that settles in our lungs, disrupts our trade, and tests every piece of infrastructure we own. The result is the intensified climate reality our most ambitious projects must be designed to withstand.
For years, I noticed a consistent pattern in Oman's projects sector: hiring consultants, conducting environmental assessments, and checking the required boxes. The focus remained on fulfilling the mandate rather than understanding the framework. The historical context is crucial: in the past, people perceived excessive requirements as obstacles that hindered investment. That memory lingers, cultivating habits that view safeguards as bureaucratic hurdles rather than competitive advantages. What crystallised the concept for me was hearing a government official state plainly in a public forum that ESG is merely ‘a checklist we must comply with.’ Not a strategic framework. Not a lens for resilience. Just boxes to tick while the climate intensifies.
The landscape has shifted, and the very terrain of finance is no longer what it was. Access to Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), the oxygen for our economic diversification, now depends entirely on those requirements, some viewed as obstacles. Global project finance has fundamentally changed. ESG-linked financing structures now include performance requirements tied to climate resilience, where failure to meet covenants can trigger funding consequences.
Sustainable bond issuance across the Middle East declined 18 per cent in early 2024 compared to the previous year, signalling that capital is becoming more selective, not less. International financiers are asking whether projects can function through intensifying weather patterns, whether infrastructure protects rather than endangers communities, and whether investments will generate returns over decades of climate volatility. The standards we once debated have become the criteria determining whether ambitious visions secure funding.
When we treat ESG as compliance paperwork, we miss what it actually measures: our capacity to build projects that endure. These frameworks assess whether we can engineer infrastructure to function through climate volatility, whether our development enhances community wellbeing rather than creating vulnerabilities, and whether we're positioned to access capital pools increasingly committed to climate-resilient investment. Without this lens, we risk building infrastructure that becomes obsolete before it matures, pursuing projects that cannot secure financing, and positioning ourselves as unprepared for the climate reality already settling over our cities. The choice is between leading in meeting these standards or perpetually working to catch up, between building the competitive advantage of preparedness or bearing the cost of scrambling to comply. Most importantly, embracing these frameworks enables us the capability to tell the next generation we recognised the changing reality and built accordingly.
We can continue viewing ESG as an administrative burden while global financing standards evolve and climate events intensify. Or we can recognise that these frameworks were never obstacles to development but rather the foundation for building projects that endure. The dust settling over Muscat this week offers a tangible cautionary tale: the environment we build within is changing, and our approach to development must change with it. The question facing us is not whether to meet these standards, but whether we'll position ourselves to lead in meeting them or find ourselves perpetually working to catch up.