Civil discourse
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- July 2, 2026
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Civil discourse
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The Constitution and the Supreme Court agree, if you are born in America, you are an American citizen but why not the President?It appears President Trump is heading off to Congress and will ask them
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A poll in the UK showed that 1 in 10 people think that schools should be held responsible for children’s behaviour. Teachers have been complaining that the children in their class are out of control.
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We all want to be happy, but many of us spend years believing it is tied to the next goal instead of focusing on the present. This week we take a look at happiness and
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The handsome Hijaz Railway Station, dating to the early 20th century, is a major monument in central Damascus. Whenever I visit the Syrian capital en route to my hotel I pass the station and the
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There is a kind of confidence that does not announce itself. It surfaces not in slogans but in ledgers — in the deliberate decision of a company to build something new in a place it has studied with care. Invest Qatar’s 2025 Annual Report, out this week, is written largely in that quieter register. Its headline figure — $3.4bn in foreign direct investment capital expenditure across 373 projects — is striking enough on its own. Yet the more instructive story lies in what those numbers reveal about how the world now reads Qatar. Consider the shape of the money, not merely its size. New projects rose 52% in a single year, and more than half of all capital expenditure went into greenfield ventures — investors building from the ground up rather than buying into what already exists. Close to half the projects fell into the medium-to-high-tech bracket. This is not simply more capital; it is a different quality of capital. Greenfield builders commit for the long haul, and high-tech ventures come looking for skills, research and a settled environment in which ideas can compound. That such investors chose Qatar in a year shadowed by regional conflict and global uncertainty is the report’s most eloquent line, though it is nowhere stated as such. The breadth is equally reassuring. Five sectors — consumer products, business services, food and beverages, software and IT services, and textiles — accounted for more than two-thirds of all projects, a spread that binds legacy industries to newer, knowledge-intensive ones. This is diversification in its truest sense: not a single audacious bet, but a widening base, precisely the ambition set out under the Third National Development Strategy. None of this, as HE the Minister of Commerce and Industry Sheikh Faisal bin Thani bin Faisal al-Thani rightly observed, was the work of fortune. Behind the figures sits a year of patient institution-building. Invest Qatar opened representative offices in London, New York, Paris, Mumbai and Istanbul, placing the country within reach of investors in the markets that matter. It launched a $1bn incentives programme aimed at advanced industry, logistics, technology and financial services, and rebuilt its digital Gateway into a single channel that now guides more than 15,000 users and 900 companies from market entry to expansion. These are the unglamorous foundations of trust — the plumbing, not the facade — and they explain why the numbers moved. The external verdicts followed. Qatar entered the top 10 of the IMD’s global competitiveness rankings for the first time and vaulted 21 places to 12th on fDi Intelligence’s greenfield performance index. Invest Qatar’s chief executive, Sheikh Ali Alwaleed al-Thani, framed the year as one of purposeful progress, and the phrase is apt: what stands out is less the scale of the numbers than the sense of direction behind them. Such endorsements are welcome, but they are best read with a measure of restraint. Rankings describe a year already lived; they are a report on the past, not a guarantee of the future. The harder task, as the agency acknowledges, is to sustain the momentum once the applause fades. That is where reflection should settle. Foreign investment is, at its heart, a statement of belief in a country’s tomorrow — a wager that stability, talent and openness will endure. The 15,000-odd jobs created last year are the human measure of that wager, the point at which macroeconomic strategy becomes a livelihood. The challenge now is neither to celebrate the figures too loudly nor to take them for granted, but to keep faith with the confidence they express — to ensure that those who chose to build here find, year after year, that they were right to do so.
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The Arabian Peninsula is at the forefront of climate change, experiencing some of its most visible and consequential effects. The challenges are serious: rising temperatures, heat waves becoming more prolonged, and sea level rise affecting coastal infrastructure, all of which impacts the well-being of people and the economy. By prioritising long-term resilience, Qatar could lead global innovations for living in arid environments. Doing so requires innovation, evidence, and strategic planning. Research to ImpactOver the last 25 years, the Gulf Cooperation Council states have invested in climate change-related research, with output increasing from virtually no published papers in 2000 to over 300 annually by 2023. While welcome, much of the research is technical and insufficiently studies the systems responsible for translating evidence into action. Our review of climate change studies across the Gulf identified three blind spots: people, policy, and price. The next phase of the region’s research agenda needs to advance evidence-to-impact pathways, which requires studies on governance, legal frameworks, public attitudes, and economic incentives. While the best models will help us understand the risks, failure to integrate the social sciences into these research agendas may leave the results sitting on the shelves. This requires new ways of working, specifically by breaking down disciplinary barriers and working beyond borders. Much of the Arabian Peninsula shares similar challenges and areas of interest. We share coastlines and aquifers, air quality transcends borders, and urban heat islands are a feature of cities across the region. Climate change is not a national issue, but research has been. Working together has the double benefit of reducing duplication of effort and enabling faster implementation of solutions. The region has the human capacity and financial resources to invest in research and innovation, ensuring that the outcomes lead to meaningful changes in policies, practices and people’s lives. We are already on the adaptation pathway, from emerging smart cities, expanding public transportation networks, and investment in cooling infrastructure, what comes next should be coordinating efforts to meet the scale of the challenge. Going ForwardHow can we move the next agenda ahead? The current research landscape is fragmented. Water experts, energy researchers, and policy leaders often work separately. In reality, these systems are deeply interconnected. Cooling demand affects desalination needs, which in turn influences grid stability and carbon emissions, all of which shape governments policy choices. Translating technical evidence into real adaptation requires systems thinking that treat the region’s sustainability challenge as one integrated problem rather than separate technical puzzles. Building on this, four priority areas should be considered. First, technical projects should embed social scientists, government experts, and economists. This can be a requirement by research donors and supported by research institutions. Second, we need to build bridges beyond borders in research, which can accelerate regional development. Mutual environmental challenges call for shared solutions and enable countries to progress together. Third, we need to be strategic in funding research and innovation for lasting impact. Investments in carbon capture and green tech, can be paired with measures such as improved building codes and urban design. Fourth, focus should be on addressing structural vulnerabilities across the region. This includes developing heat- and salt-tolerant crops, regionalisng vertical farming, advancing water recycling, and improving aquifer management. It also means making the current system more efficient by cutting food loss, localising diets, and positioning the region as a testbed for pioneering breakthroughs in arid agriculture. We have the opportunity to turn the narrative around: The Arabian Gulf need not be viewed as a hotspot for climate change risks when it can be at the forefront of resilience. The talent, motivation and resources are in place. The next step requires coordinated, interdisciplinary, and region-wide efforts that connect evidence to policy and action. If that happens, the region won’t just adapt to a changing climate, it will export local knowledge and solutions to other vulnerable communities around the world. The Arabian Gulf was built on turning hostile environments into prosperity. Climate change is simply the next test. Pass it together, and the desert can teach the rest of the world how to live. About Hamad Bin Khalifa UniversityInnovating Today, Shaping TomorrowHamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU), a member of Qatar Foundation for Education, Science, and Community Development (QF), is a leading, innovation-centric university committed to advancing education and research to address critical challenges facing Qatar and beyond. HBKU develops multidisciplinary academic programmes and national research capabilities that drive collaboration with leading global institutions. The university is dedicated to equipping future leaders with an entrepreneurial mindset and advancing innovative solutions that create a positive global impact.For more information about HBKU, its colleges, research institutes, and initiatives, please visit www.hbku.edu.qa.To stay up to date on our social media activities, follow our accounts on: LinkedIn, Instagram, X, and Facebook.For any media inquiries, please contact: [email protected]. Dr Logan Cochrane is Dean of Hamad Bin Khalifa University’s College of Public Policy and Professor in Public Policy.Dr Dhabia al-Mohannadi is Associate Professor at the same institution’s College of Science and Engineering.(This piece has been submitted by HBKU’s Communications Directorate on behalf of its author. The thoughts and views expressed are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect an official University stance).
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It is a much-publicised and loudly proclaimed fact that US President Donald Trump is a climate change denier and he is proud of his ill-informed position. Ever since he became president for the second time
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After nearly four decades in Britain, Ali Haydor says there are now days when he wishes he could hide his brown skin. Violent protests erupted in his home city of Southampton after a British-born Sikh,
