Climate Change and Destabilization in the MENA Region

Aug 3, 2015 | Ian Armstrong
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The devastating environmental impacts of climate change have together become such an ominous cloud on the horizon that they often overshadow other potentially grave consequences that will emerge in their wake. Fortunately, a recent in-house simulation at Wikistrat — the world’s first crowdsourced consultancy where I am a Researcher — sought to address just that. Analysts were asked to explore the geopolitical consequences of climate change. While there is potential for climate change-induced conflict across all regions of the globe, current events have led me to believe that one region in particular will face challenges as the effects of global warming intensify: the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).

In fact, the possibility of climate change leading to further destabilization in the MENA region may already be taking place. Scholars have already suggested that climate-change induced drought was a contributing factor to the devastating and still on-going civil war in Syria, where challenges associated with “climate variability and change in the availability and use of freshwater” created the environment of instability in which non-state actors thrive. Compounding this, the MENA region as a whole is the most water-scarce region on the planet, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is now projecting powerful changes in climate across the region. This will be certain to exacerbate pressure on available resources such as water and agricultural production, with the annual sum of precipitation projected to decrease by 15-20% by the year 2040.