The United Arab Emirates has revealed plans to relocate icebergs from Antarctica to its own coasts to provide the region with drinking water, according to The Independent.

Plans to tow icebergs to the coast of the eastern emirate of Fujairah have been created by the Masdar city-based company The National Advisor Bureau Limited. The company subsequently plans to mine the icebergs for drinking water. 

The company's managing director, Abdullah Mohammad Sulaiman Al Shehi, told Gulf News that, on average, an iceberg holds more than 20 billion gallons of water. This is enough to provide for one million people over a period of five years.

He continued that the presence of an iceberg could give rise to micro-climates in the region, bringing rain to the otherwise dry area. “It would create a vortex which would draw clouds from all over the region,” he claimed.

"This is the purest water in the world."

Although the main objective of this project is to provide drinking water, Mr Al Shehi believes that the sights of icebergs floating along the coasts of the United Arab Emirates could pose huge potential for tourism, as well as benefiting the weather.

He said that, according to the company's predictions, it will take a total of one year to relocate the iceberg to the UAE and, if this is the case, the project will start in early 2018. The company's water processing project will begin once the iceberg is offshore.

The proposed strategy is to chip off large blocks from above the waterline of the iceberg, which will then be stored in large tanks and filtered to provide drinking water.

Antarctica is said to hold up to 70 per cent of the world's fresh water and Mr Al Shehi stands by this, saying that "this is the purest water in the world".