Integrating Climate, Peace, and Security in MENA Countries’ NDCs

May 20, 2024 | George Meddings and Frans Schapendonk
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The potential threat climate change poses to peace and security is perhaps nowhere more apparent than in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) are one way MENA countries can address this compound risk.

Climate change phenomena such as rising temperatures, increasingly scarce water resources, desertification, and soil erosion risk directly undermining the food and livelihood security of around 20% of the region’s population that directly relies upon food, land, and water systems for their income and sustenance. Such impacts could also lead to destabilizing cascading societal effects by jeopardizing already fraught state-society relations, contributing to unemployment and price increases, and further exacerbating existing conflict dynamics. Moreover, given the bi-directional nature of the climate-conflict interface whereby climate risks and conflict can compound to drive a vicious cycle of vulnerability, continued instability and conflict in parts of the region are likely to hinder states’ and communities’ efforts to build sufficient adaptive capacity. This renders such contexts ever more vulnerable to evolving climate impacts. Indeed, as much was underlined by Taylor Luck in his brief on climate priorities in the Middle East and North Africa.