Mideast: Climate Change Begins A Chaotic Reign In The Arid Mideast
Matt palmer
On April 23 and 24, and again on April 30 and May 1, Israel fought wildfires that burned thousands of acres of forest in its central regions surrounding Jerusalem. Earlier in April, Iraq suffered dust storms that hospitalized thousands struggling to breathe. The Middle East is increasingly a front for humanity’s battle with climate change.
Each passing year brings new climate change-fueled challenges to the Middle East. Climate crises can exacerbate other issues societies face, such as conflict or poverty, and viciously cyclical poverty and conflict can exacerbate climate crises.
Many Middle Eastern countries face their own daily political, economic, cultural, and social challenges. War, poverty, corruption, and uncertainty mire the region. Each nation faces climate change, which ignores borders and political structures. In a sense, the shared threats of drought, dust, fire, and extreme heat contribute to a common set of governance challenges across the Middle East.
For the last two decades, Israel has been confronting increased wildfires. The threat challenged the government to respond by investigating and investing in firefighting teams and technology. So far, experts say little has been done.
A massive fire in 2010, which burned tens of thousands of acres, hundreds of homes, millions of trees, and killed 44 people, rampaged out of control. Many Israelis thought the response to the fire should be an investment in fire-prevention and firefighting programming. It devolved into political spats, with the left and right blaming one another for the lack of preparedness, while nothing was solved.
Haaretz, an Israeli publication that frequently publishes opposition views, wrote an article praising an Israeli fire chief for blaming the wildfires on climate change and predicting that more would follow. In Israel, the questions following fires often try to determine which terrorists were responsible this time and how to eliminate the fire-setting capacity of Palestinians. Fires are rarely the result of terror attacks, and it is highly difficult to completely prevent individuals from setting fires. The fire chief called for investments in fire safety and response in the face of a hotter and drier future of the Israeli climate.
In Iraq, rising temperatures and reduced rainfall spell dangerous drought and heat. The New York Times Daily team recently interviewed a farmer who, when asked if he had hope for future harvests, responded wryly, “No, but it can’t get any worse…”
Iraq’s rainfall has plummeted in the last fifty years, and the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, around which humans have lived since the ancient civilizations of Assyria and Babylon, have slowed to a trickle. A country that got by on farming is turning to other means of profit, frequently more dangerous and less societally valuable.
In Yemen, almost 15 million people lack consistent access to clean water. Their thirst is made worse by high temperatures and a rising population. Over 90 percent of the water from Yemen is drawn for agriculture, while agriculture has become steadily less economically beneficial. Agriculture is frequently for crops with little quality of life or economic value, not food, but Qat, a popular narcotic.
Governments heavily favored expansion and growth across the Middle East and North Africa after the dust settled from World War II. Many Middle Eastern populations tripled from the 1950s until today, as did land irrigated for agriculture. This meant new dams, which meant a new method of intercountry competition for control. Turkey controlled how much water flowed into Syria and Syria into Iraq.
The water is now drying up, as is the oil that paid for the expansions. Without water and money, farmers in struggling nations are moving to cities for economic opportunity, and they are not finding it. The Middle East’s climate issues will worsen this century regardless of politics or conflict. A temperature increase of four degrees Celsius would decrease precipitation by 75 percent. The Middle East is expected to see a five-degree Celsius increase by the end of the twenty-first century.
The ability of a nation to respond to climate change is directly proportional to its socioeconomic strength and stability. Countries with great wealth and strong governments rank much higher on the readiness index prepared by the University of Notre Dame. The United Arab Emirates, for example, faces the same level of vulnerability to climate change as Syria and Yemen. However, its readiness score is far greater than the latter two.
It is a terrible fate that a region of the world struggling so deeply with conflict and poverty should be at such high risk of the climate crisis. This is true for the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, and Central America / the Caribbean. Perhaps it is not a coincidence that some factors that place a country at greater risk of climate emergency (extreme temperatures, extreme precipitation or lack thereof, access to arable land) also put the country at greater risk of sociopolitical or economic disasters.
Confronting the aggressive climate situation is imperative and a massive opportunity for the Middle East to create new systems of commerce and governance that cooperate and build a better world. Many academics, activists, and policy wonks advocate for greater cooperation in addressing climate change and regulation regarding water use or agricultural practice. The governments of the Middle East must heed the warnings on their shores and the voices of experts if they are to weather the coming crisis.
More immediate issues, such as the war in Gaza, the revolution in Syria, a crisis of conscience in Israel, war in Yemen, a power vacuum in Iraq, and authoritarianism in Turkey, often take precedent over the coming climate catastrophe for good reason. There are civilians in danger, refugees are incoming, or unemployed citizens right now. However, the beginnings of the climate crisis have already arrived, event by event, day by day, degree by degree. A wildfire here, a drought there. Soon, it will consume the region. The remaining question is whether Middle Eastern governments will become even more divided by the crisis, or will they band together in common cause?
