Maitha Al Hameli

After years of studying, working in, and living beside the Arabian Gulf, Maitha Al Hameli knows the sea waters like the back of her hand. For the past 16 years, she has led or participated in a wide range of conservation programs at the Environment Agency – Abu Dhabi (EAD), including environmental surveys, habitat restoration projects, marine wildlife rescue missions, and marine biodiversity assessments. A natural-born leader with diverse skills in science, business, and government, Al Hameli stands out as a change agent in the environment sector.

Maitha Al Hameli currently serves as the UAE Sustainable Ocean Plan focal point under the Ocean Panel Sherpa. She is expected to lead a national coordination to design and deliver the plan, aligning federal ministries and local authorities around shared goals and timelines.

Before this assignment she spent 16 years at the Environment Agency Abu Dhabi. She developed hands-on expertise across environmental surveys, habitat restoration, marine wildlife rescue, and biodiversity assessments. She combined scientific training, operational management, and policy experience to turn research into programs that work in the field. She managed teams, budgets, and partnerships, and she built processes that improved data quality and safety in challenging marine conditions.

As Manager of Marine Assessment and Conservation and of Terrestrial and Marine Biodiversity, she oversaw several first-of-their-kind initiatives in the region. These included the region’s first systematic dolphin survey and a systematic seagrass survey. She led the region’s longest running coral survey and a systematic dugong survey. She expanded a turtle release initiative that involves local communities, builds public awareness, and links rehabilitation outcomes with long term monitoring.

Through partnerships with private and technology sectors, she delivered a drone enabled mangrove planting pilot in the region and helped scale drone based planting across suitable sites. She helped build a resilient coral nursery program in Abu Dhabi and supported actions that reduced bycatch of dolphins, turtles, and dugongs.

Her goal is to deepen collaboration with government and industry and to expand conservation at the national scale, while keeping it transparent and data driven.

She holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Sciences from Zayed University and a Master of Environmental Science from the United Arab Emirates University. She has graduate coursework in diplomacy and international affairs and is pursuing a PhD in Ecology and Environmental Sciences at the United Arab Emirates University.