Climate Change: The Silent Threat to Stability in the Middle East
While most of the political attention on the Middle East is concentrated on the resolution of the Syrian Civil War to stabilize the region, a quiet player jeopardizes its long-term political security. Despite the growing body of scientific findings that depict a grim picture of the region’s future climate conditions, the policy makers continue to ignore the projected impacts of climate change on the Middle East, particularly the Fertile Crescent.
The Fertile Crescent, also known as the Euphrates-Tigris Basin (ETB), has long been recognized as the “bread basket” of the Middle East due to its fertile soil and two rivers, Euphrates and Tigris. These two extensive rivers keep the otherwise barren desert alive and transcend Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Turkey until they merge a few hundred miles upstream of the Persian Gulf, where they meet the open sea. Spanning a territory that is shared between all these countries, the Fertile Crescent is the main source of food and economic activity for the locals, as well as the rest of the population that relies on the crops raised there.
In a region that is under such significant water stress, these rivers continue to be a critical source of water, especially for the agrarian populations that do not have access to distributed water infrastructure, and are faced with rapid rates of groundwater depletion. Considering that Iraq and Syria in particular are struggling with terrorism and war, a continuous water supply is key to any plans that aim to stabilize the Northern region of the basin.
While most of the political attention is on uncertainties such as terrorism and the ongoing Syrian Civil War, the threat that climate change poses to the Fertile Crescent, perhaps one of the riskiest uncertainties, is lacking in political discourses. However, despite the lack of attention, there are many studies that predict critical changes in climate patterns in the next couple of decades and require urgent intervention by policy makers. For example, one research predicts that the Fertile Crescent will disappear by the end of this century due to drastic declines in the streamflow of the three main rivers (Euphrates, Tigris and Jordan) in the region, rendering agricultural activities in the region unfeasible.
Another study suggests that the average temperature in ETB will rise by more than the average global temperature increase, potentially triggering more frequent heat waves and more persistent droughts. The same study projects a shrinkage in the snowpack as well. Considering that Euphrates and Tigris are of great importance for hydropower generation in Turkey and Iraq, declining and irregular streamflow in Euphrates and Tigris will potentially result in less hydropower generation, possibly forcing Turkish and Iraqi governments to replace hydropower with an alternative source before these massive hydropower projects can amortize the financial costs.
Some may even argue that climate change is already playing a role in the destabilization of the region, as some scholars successfully linked the eruption of Syrian Civil War to climate change. According to one research published in 2015, the disruption in the water regime caused by climate change resulted in an extended drought in Syria in early 2000’s. Coupled with bad governance, this extended drought resulted in quick depletion of groundwater resources. As a result, many people from rural areas of Syria had to abandon their arable lands and move to the urban areas throughout the 2000’s, leading to less food production and higher food prices. The urban economies were not able to buffer this influx of rural populations, hence the rise in unemployment rates. The authors argued that these conditions aggravated public discontent with the Assad regime and laid the foundations for the eventual uprising in 2011.
The Middle East is only one of the regions that are expected to disproportionately suffer from the changing climate in the next few decades. However, it is also one of the least prepared, both politically and economically, which makes it quite vulnerable to even the slightest fluctuations in critical resources like water, let alone the additional risks concerning rising temperatures and hydropower. The science does a splendid job in demonstrating the immediate need for mitigation and adaptation measures. But the region now needs climate leaders who have the political will to get out of their myopic understanding of stability and give the well-deserved attention to climate change that is long overdue.
