The countries of the Middle East, especially Arabic-speaking ones, are among the world’s most exposed states to the accelerating impacts of human-caused climate change. But the consequences will be felt unevenly across the region. Resource-poor countries that lack in adaptive capacities like infrastructure, technology, and human and physical capital will suffer more acutely, especially as global warming contributes to the degradation of rural livelihoods and jeopardizes food security. The effects will magnify preexisting inequities and decades of unsustainable government policies, particularly those related to water and land management.
In contrast, richer, oil-exporting states are better equipped to withstand the climatic shocks through measures like desalinization, investment in agricultural projects (often outside the Middle East), and the importation of foodstuffs. However, these states’ long-term resilience, which rests on the distribution of hydrocarbon rents to their citizens in the form of subsidies, jobs, and social benefits, will be tested under the fiscal strains imposed by the global transition to green energy. That transition forms the centerpiece of these states’ net zero pledges and plans for renewable energy, carbon capture, and the export of clean hydrogen. But absent changes to the underlying incentive structures in these states through more holistic economic, regulatory, and political reforms, the feasibility of such plans remains questionable.
Relatedly, and more importantly, both oil-exporting and -importing states have so far privileged climate change mitigation over adaptation, defined by the United Nations as the “process of adjustment to actual or expected climate and its effects, in order to moderate harm.” The prioritization of and funding for adaptation have been lacking at a global level as well, but in the Arab world, this inadequacy is more closely tied to the specificities of Arab governance. Most crucially, a longtime preference for centralized, top-town policies by insular, autocratic, and repressive Arab regimes—ubiquitous, in varying degrees, despite the initial hopes of the 2011 Arab uprisings—has translated into a reluctance to permit or encourage the sort of grassroots, bottom-up activism that is necessary to build effective climate resilience.
As a result, population segments acutely vulnerable to climate impacts because of geography, but more importantly because of years of governmental neglect, failed socioeconomic policies, and political marginalization, are being shut out of climate conversations. The consequences of this exclusion will be profound, not only for the human security and well-being of these affected communities—who in many cases can also contribute valuable local knowledge to climate adaptation and mitigation—but also for the development and even stability of certain countries.
To be clear, climate change is not the main driver of or even a major contributing factor to violent conflict, protests, or riots. The popular theory that posits a direct causal link between global warming, droughts, rural-urban migration, and the 2011 social unrest that led to the Syrian Civil War has been convincingly discredited by multiple scholars based on careful scrutiny of other factors, including the malignant effects of Syrian regime policies and ideology and the absence of so-called climate migrants in the initial demonstrations. Drawing on other cases, a number of other studies reach the same conclusion: any progression from a climate change event to war or unrest has been tempered or offset by a number of intervening factors—especially the choices of its political authorities.
Relatedly, the policy-favored description of climate change as a “threat multiplier”—an accelerant or amplifier of existing security risks and stressors—has also been criticized as too fuzzy and too narrow given its definition of security as simply the absence of violent conflict. Similarly, predictions of climate-induced migration, especially between countries, have been deemed over-speculative, unsupported by data, and, again, prone to securitization by xenophobic governments, who instead of blocking human movements should consider them forms of climate adaptation. Even the much-hyped prediction that climate change would increase the likelihood of “water wars” breaking out has been challenged in studies that point to the absence of such conflicts in the historical record and to the possibilities for future “hydrological cooperation” and diplomacy.
In sum, these various critiques of an overly securitized and deterministic reading of climate change have important policy implications for the Middle East and especially the Arab world. Such a reading tends to obscure the root causes of climate change vulnerability and absolves the region’s rulers from acknowledging that their deficient policies—related to meager social safety nets, bloated public sectors, corruption, poor environmental stewardship, and civil and interstate war—play a significant role in worsening the injurious impacts of climate change on the welfare of their citizens. This reading could also lead to a disproportionate focus on technological solutions both to the energy transition and to adaptation at home, which would conveniently allow a business-as-usual approach to preserving rentier economies and the timeworn ruling arrangements that underpin them.
Put differently, politics, governance, and human agency matter in mediating the exposure of societies to environmental hazards and climate change, and they always have—more so than both climate determinists and apologists for the current Arab order care to acknowledge.
The essays in this collection aim to counter the overly securitized and deterministic thinking around climate change by bringing issues of governance and politics into the climate conversation of the Arab world. They are titled as:
- Beyond "Green Pledges": Saudi Arabia and Society-Centered Climate Reforms
- Preserving Iraq's Mesopotamian Marches in the Face of Climate Challenges
- Costs of Delaying Improvements in Climate Change Governance in Jordan
- Lebanon: Can a Green Economy Pave the Way out of Economic Collapse?
- Palestine and the U.S. - Supported Regional Approaches to Address Climate Change and Water Scarcity
- Rural Vulnerability and Resource Governance in Water-Scarce Egypt
- Federal Barriers to Tunisia's Climate Momentum
- Libya's Climate Fragility: Adaptation Through Decentralization
- Climate Change and Migration Prospects Between West and North Africa
This report was originally published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The original and full version can be viewed using the link here.
The report and its chapters were authored by: Frederic Wehrey, Justin Dargin, Zainab Mehdi, Marwan Muasher, Maha Yahya, Issam Kayssi, Zaha Hassan, Madison Andrews, Mathew Madain, Mohammad Al-Mailam, Amr Hamzawy, Sarah Yerkes, Haley Clasen, and Gilles Yabi.