Introduction: A Mandate for Science in the Emirates

In the eyes of the world, Abu Dhabi and the United Arab Emirates have come to be defined principally by their resource abundance, which have been both a boon and a bane for the region. The source of enormous wealth since the 1960s, oil and gas exports have propelled prosperity in Abu Dhabi to unprecedented heights – including one of the highest GDPper- capita incomes and largest sovereign wealth funds of the world. On the other hand, the booming oil industry and the associated high pace of development have led to a range of well-documented economic, social, and environmental challenges, which have taken an increasingly firm hold on development discourses and questions of identity in the young nation (Government of Abu Dhabi 2008).

These challenges include first and foremost a monolithic economic dependency on the oil and gas market. While the structure of Abu Dhabi's economy has shifted in recent years towards other sectors, hydrocarbon exports are still responsible for 55% of Abu Dhabi's GDP of USD 260B (SCAD 2014), with much of the remaining 45% being fueled by downstream oil wealth. As a result, the Emirate continues to be extremely vulnerable to the boom-and-bust cycles of commodity markets, which in conjunction with a tenaciously low oil price in recent years and the looming exhaustibility of the hydrocarbon resources have resulted in increasingly urgent calls for diversification. Yet, structural changes to the economy are difficult: The challenges of a primarily resource-based economy have been discussed widely in the literature and include, for example, elements of the ‘Dutch Disease’ (i.e. currency appreciation due to commodity export-driven cash injections, with a subsequent decline in competitiveness in other domestic sectors), the crowding out of skilled labor and investment from other industries (particularly manufacturing), social and political reform lock-ins, governance challenges around rent-seeking tendencies, and other effects commonly subsumed under the term “resource curse” (Corden & Neary 1982; Neary & Wijnbergen 1986; Gelb 1988; Auty 1994; Karl 1997; Jensen & Wantchekon 2004; Morrison 2006; Dunning 2008; Ross 2013).