Michael Arthurs serves as UAE Mission Director at the Bridge Institute, leading the UAE Carbon Removal Breakthrough Coalition and its work to build the policy, market and institutional foundations for carbon dioxide removal at scale. He also leads the Institute's role in the development of eco-villages, biochar and land restoration across the sub-Sahel of Africa with EVOKE International.
He co-founded the coalition and led the United Arab Emirates' first national evaluation of carbon removal methods and governance, setting out domestic and international solution pathways alongside carbon market recommendations. Building on that work, he co-leads development of the Atmosphere Restoration Centre, a proposed international agency for carbon removal, and contributes to the Institute's programme of national carbon removal workshops. His current focus is government engagement across North America, the Gulf, Europe, Asia and Africa.
Michael is a co-founder of Diamond A Group, whose industrial decarbonisation and business development companies operate internationally. He brings close to thirty years leading energy, resources and agriculture projects across five continents, including senior project, commercial, business development and sustainability management roles in shale gas, national oil companies and carbon capture in North America, South America, the Middle East, Africa and Asia, a regional director role across the Middle East and Africa with a multinational biotechnology firm, several years in China with an investment firm conducting feasibility studies of investment projects, and CEO of a Canadian mining and air emissions company based in Hong Kong. He has held board and advisory positions in hydrogen and carbon capture, sustainable farming and land conservation, and comes from a multi-generational family farm in southern Alberta.
Michael holds an MSc in Environmental Management from Cranfield University and a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Calgary, and has been an IEMA Practitioner since 2004.
