author - oman observer

“If hydrogen production and localisation stay in producer countries, Europeans lose jobs. And unemployment leads to fascism.”The European panellist's words hung in the air during our...

The fire broke out on Thursday afternoon. I watched the videos from Muscat: smoke billowing from the venue’s upper floors, delegates evacuating into Belém’s humid air, clutching laptops and...

One week of climate negotiations has lapsed in Belém, and to call the atmosphere charged would be an understatement. In windowless rooms reeking of instant coffee and anxiety, negotiators who speak...

Thirty years have passed since the start of climate talks. Ten years since the Paris Agreement. Now, as delegates gather in Belém for COP30, Hurricane Melissa has delivered a message louder than any...

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...

During a guest lecture in Muscat, I asked students one question: What will Oman look like in 2100? Their answers came bright and certain. Greener, they said. Less dependent on oil. New energies...

In Al Duqm, Oman’s green hydrogen hubs are rising on a foundation of renewable energy and industrial-scale desalination. The infrastructure is already programmed: steady power, reliable water, and...

Every summit begins with vision statements. This one began with a ledger. The IUCN Conservation Congress treated conservation as a balance sheet of species, coastlines, and political will. The week...

Muscat felt like a harbour the night Sinbad the Omani Sailor opened. The hall lifted with strings and voices as an old voyage met a new century. Days earlier, I had stood at the Berkeley Forum,...

New York offered a study in stillness and motion. One minute the city surged, the next it paused. President Trump’s motorcade locked an avenue in place, and even the French president stood waiting...

I spent last week in Hong Kong at the Belt and Road Summit, a gathering that feels like a living map. You can hear trade routes in the hallway, see ports and rail lines in a speaker’s hand gesture,...

I woke today to a sky the colour of pewter, the kind that makes the sea pause. In Oman, we read the weather like a familiar poem. The shamal, the slow build of heat over the Gulf, the khareef mist...

I have been thinking about silence and how it settles around women who are told to wait, lower their voices, and soften their ambition until meaning blurs. Breaking that silence rarely arrives as a...

Years ago, when I was working in fisheries, we explored the idea of drawing cold water from the deep seas off Oman. The vision was simple on paper and ambitious in practice: water cool enough to...

Some mornings in Muscat I wake before the city stirs. Heat gathers early, heavy before sunrise. At a summer camp last week, a girl in the front row asked how to plan a life when the map keeps...

Some stories force us to confront more than injustice. They ask us to examine the limits of our empathy, the thresholds of our action and the truths we are still unwilling to hold. A legal ruling. A...

The sun streamed into my office last Wednesday afternoon as I watched history unfold from thousands of miles away. At the Peace Palace in The Hague, the International Court of Justice delivered its...

What happens to a country that uses nearly 195 million tonnes of materials a year, only to reuse 2 per cent of them? This question became the framing lens for Oman’s first Circularity Gap Report,...

I was catching up on the news when a headline from Brazil caught my eye. COP30’s presidency has initiated a global call to address what they are identifying as climate disinformation. Not soft...

What if you were offered $232 billion to shape the future of your region? No contest. No catch. Only a choice. To act with care, with courage and with creativity.That figure is real. It is the...