In the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), young people (defined as fifteen to twenty-four years old) are going to bear the brunt of the climate crisis. Yet, despite representing a disproportionately large percentage of the region’s population, youth are rarely consulted in policy decisions, including around climate adaptation and mitigation
Youth and Climate Change in the Middle East and North Africa
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
In the context of the 2025 Munich Security Conference (MSC), it is critical that leaders, understandably consumed with state-centric geopolitical disruptions, pay close attention to transnational and systemic risks – one of the most significant of which is the food-climate conflict nexus.
Roots of Resilience: Building Peace in an Era of Food and Climate Shocks
Istituto Affari Internazionali and the Center for Climate and Security
Qatar is a high-income, resource-rich country, with an economy based around the exploitation of its vast fossil fuel reserves, particularly natural gas. As a result of the development of liquefied natural gas (LNG) and other fossil fuel-intensive industries that started in the 1990s, Qatar’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew from $18bn to $236bn (in 2024 USD) between the years 2000 and 2022.
The Challenges of Climate Change Mitigation and Economic Diversification in Qatar
Middle East Council on Global Affairs
The September floods in the LCB disrupted the lives of millions. Extreme precipitation events since August 2024 have impacted over 4.4 million people in West and Central Africa. According to United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA), the countries most affected include Chad, with 1.5 million people impacted, Nigeria, with over 1.1 million, Niger, with 710,767, and Cameroon, with 409,710.
Flooding and Climate Shocks: Their effect on local economies in The Lake Chad Basin
Policy Center for the New South
Iraq is vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Throughout the country, communities are seeing their livelihoods and everyday lives increasingly disrupted by scorching temperatures, water scarcity, extended droughts and dust storms. While the impacts of the climate crisis are widely felt, they can be especially pernicious in conflict-affected contexts as climate change exacerbates existing vulnerabilities and increases the risk of insecurity.
Community dialogue as a peacebuilding tool Insights from environmental dialogue in the Nineveh Plains of Iraq
SIPRI Research Policy Paper
In order for Egypt to respond effectively to the alarming environmental threats it faces, it must bring the large number of military-managed projects and production in the civilian domain under a single, integrated national framework for climate change mitigation and adaptation planning, monitoring, and accountability.
Do No Harm: Toward an Environmental Audit of Military-Managed Civilian Projects in Egypt
Carnegie Middle East Center
The report represents a comprehensive analysis of the linkages between climate change and migration in Africa. Emphasis is given to the importance of recognizing the interlinkages between environmental and migration issues, with a view to undertaking comprehensive and multidimensional assessments that can feed into the design and development of sustainable and actionable policies across Africa.
African migration report: climate change and migration in Africa
United Nations Economic Commission for Africa
Biodiversity is the foundation for security: myriad micro-organisms filter and purify fresh water, the most basic essential for survival; pollinators hold the front line of food production; complex interactions across ecosystems regulate pests and disease vectors; forests, lakes, and coral reefs sustain livelihoods and economic stability.
Gone Fishing: A Biodiversity Loss Security Scenario in the Lake Victoria Basin
Council on Strategic Risks
In Somalia, climate change disproportionately disrupts agricultural and pastoral livelihoods, driving harmful practices, such as resource overexploitation, which exacerbate conflicts. To address these challenges, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) promotes regenerative agriculture as a part of a broader environmental peacebuilding approach aiming to replace negative coping strategies with sustainable practices for long-term resilience
Cultivating Change: Regenerative Agriculture and Peacebuilding in South-central Somalia
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
The Central African Republic (CAR) is highly exposed to the impacts of climate change due to socioecological vulnerabilities and ongoing insecurity. Drivers of vulnerability include the absence of state authority, natural resource mismanagement, and low household and community resilience. Although the security situation has improved in recent years, it remains volatile
Climate, Peace and Security Fact Sheet: Central African Republic
Norwegian Institute of International Affairs and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
COP 29, which will be held in Baku between November 11-22, has been widely trailed as “the finance COP” and it is certainly true that decisions on how funding for mitigation and adaptation in the developing world is to be sourced and allocated will be fundamental to the success of the Conference.
Preparing for COP 29: Seven critical success factors
The Oxford Institute for Energy Studies
Pressure is growing on companies in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) to accelerate their progress on sustainability. To achieve this will require regional guidelines, materiality assessments and political leadership. While the region faces considerable climate-related challenges, it is endowed with abundant access to solar and wind energy, a ready supply of capital and a long-term focus among many of its governments.
Reading of the Week: Prioritizing Sustainability in MENA. Mapping critical environmental issues for regional businesses
World Economic Forum and Bain & Company
Highly vulnerable to climate change and already facing significant climate impacts, the countries of East Africa require both domestic and international climate finance to meet their climate goals, adapt to the impacts of climate change and build resilience. This study analyses the public international climate-related development finance reaching Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda, the three largest countries in the East Africa region.
Climate finance in East Africa
Danish Institute for International Studies
Reducing carbon emissions entails a fundamental shift in energy production and consumption. It requires significantly more mineral products, such as copper and lithium, to manufacture low-carbon and mobility products. However, accessing the critical raw materials (CRMs) and related cleantech products needed to keep global warming under the 1.5°C threshold is increasingly challenging.
Developing Green Value Chains: Collaborating for a Mutually Beneficial EU-Africa Partnership
Istituto Affari Internazionali
Yemen is experiencing brutal cycles of drought and deluge, a dangerous combination for a people already facing severe food insecurity. Water scarcity and desertification are among the most complex challenges facing Yemen. The country suffers from chronic water shortages and a high rate of desertification, not to mention natural disasters like floods, droughts, and changing weather patterns such as rising temperatures
From palms to sands. How climate change is destroying green Yemen
The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
Burkina Faso, a low-income country in the Sahel region of Africa, has improved many of its human development indicators in recent decades, including reducing child mortality rates. This has been achieved in part through investing to improve nutrition and women’s access to health care through the Universal Health Insurance Scheme
Improving food security and child health in Burkina Faso in a changing climate
The London School of Economics and Political Science
Relentless urbanisation often has a heavy environmental cost, arising from activities such as the consumption of fossil resources to fuel industrialisation and infrastructure development. The resulting surge in greenhouse gas emissions is one of the biggest contributors to climate change, which leads to frequent extreme weather events such as floods, droughts, and heatwaves. Such events pose an existential threat to human life, infrastructure, and economic stability.
The Promise of Bioeconomy as a Solution for Sustainability
The Observer Research Foundation
Africa’s large reserves of critical minerals could boost continental industrialisation, while helping global measures against climate change. However, geopolitical tensions between the US-led Group of Seven (G7) and China are adding to some of the structural factors hindering African efforts to move up critical mineral value chains. This policy insight compares the role of Chinese actors in the DRC and Zimbabwe’s mineral sectors with emerging counter-initiatives led by G7 partners.
Africas critical minerals : Boosting development amid geopolitical challenges
The South African Institute of International Affairs
Somalia is experiencing significant impacts of climate change, including higher air temperatures, increased evaporation and more variable inter annual rainfall, all of which lead to more frequent and severe droughts and floods. These changes have direct consequences for the estimated 72 per cent of the national population that relies on farming and pastoralism.
From conflict to collaboration: Co-funding environmental peacebuilding in South-Central Somalia
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
In June 2024, ESD got the chance to sit down with General (ret.) Thomas Antonius Middendorp, of the Royal Netherlands Armed Forces to discuss his thoughts on the links between climate change and security challenges, as well as the benefits to be gained by modern militaries through the adoption of ‘green’ technologies. Gen. Middendorp has witnessed first-hand the effects of and security risks posed by climate change during his time in uniform.
Reading of the Week: The Climate General - Weighing the impact of climate change on security and how militaries should evolve
European Security & Defence
In South Sudan, climate impacts-most clearly in the form of flooding and drought-have contributed to mass displacement, exacerbated resource and food scarcity, and dramatically affected agricultural and grazing patterns. As in other contexts, these phenomena do not alone explain the persistent conflict and political violence that have seized South Sudan in the short time since its independence.
To Stem the Tide: Climate Change, UNMISS, and the Protection of Civilians
Center for Civilians in Conflict
In East Africa, harvesting of main season cereals is nearing completion in the south while planting and development continues in the north, and a mix of dry and wet conditions throughout the season is impacting many areas. In the Middle East and North Africa, wheat harvesting finalized in July under mixed conditions, with generally poor to failure outcomes in western North Africa
Crop Monitor for Early Warning, August 24
Global Agricultural Monitoring
Although all of Africa contributes less than 4 percent to global greenhouse gases annually, many African countries are especially vulnerable to extreme weather events and are unable to adapt to long-term changes in the climate. African countries experience an average of 5 to 15 percent GDP loss per year due to climate change.
Who Speaks for Africa at COP? Power and Politics at the UN Climate Negotiations
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Extreme heat is deadly and disrupts economies and societies. Modelled estimates show that between 2000 and 2019, approximately 489,000 heat-related deaths occurred each year, with 45 per cent of these in Asia and 36 per cent in Europe1. Heat exposure related loss in labour capacity resulted in average potential income losses equivalent to US$863 billion in 20222
United Nations Secretary-Generals Call to Action on Extreme Heat
United Nations
Global Gateway represents the offer the EU is making to its external partners. It will help to tackle the most pressing global challenges, from fighting climate change to improving health systems, as well as boosting competitiveness and security of global supply chains.
Evolving Africa-Europe Relations: Prospects For a Sustainable Future
Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI)
Policy awareness about the challenges of climate change in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region has been on the rise, especially with Egypt hosting the 27th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP27) in 2022 and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) hosting COP28 in 2023.
Reading of the Week: Climate Change in the Middle East and North Africa - Mitigating Vulnerabilities and Designing Effective Policies
Carnegie Endowment For International Peace
Launched in 2008, the Mediterranean Solar Plan (MSP) represents one of the most emblematic and ambitious initiatives for the integration of low-carbon energy in the Euro-Mediterranean energy space. Despite being led by the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) and the European Union (EU), the MSP never achieved its objectives and was subsequently disbanded
Lessons learnt form the failure of the Mediterranean Solar Plan
Euromesco
Policy awareness about the challenges of climate change in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region has been on the rise, especially with Egypt hosting the 27th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP27) in 2022 and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) hosting COP28 in 2023
Climate Change in the Middle East and North Africa: Mitigating Vulnerabilities and Designing Effective Policies
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Around two-thirds of the population in the Middle East and North Africa lives in urban settlements, exceeding the global average of 55%, and these areas account for about 78% of energy use and more than 60% of greenhouse gas emissions. By 2050, the region’s population is projected to double
Climate-smart cities in the MENA region: Promise and pitfalls
Middle East Institute
Climate change is not just transforming the environment: it is also exacting a marked toll on mental health. In July 2023, scientists at Yale published a study of the psychological effects of climate change on adults in the United States and found that seven percent were experiencing mild to severe climate-related psychological distress.
Climate Policy Is Working
Foreign Affairs
A universally acknowledged truth is that there must be something inexplicably wrong with Africa. How can a continent endowed with so much natural wealth be so poor? How can a green desert be possible? Whatever bad leadership, colonial vestiges, social fractures or other negative forces are at work in Africa must be worse than everywhere else to make this paradox make sense.
The strategic mirage of Africas green minerals wealth
Overseas Development Institute
Compared to neighboring countries that continue to wrestle with political instability, natural disasters, conflict, and mass migrations, Jordan is a relatively small and stable nation. Yet today it faces serious economic challenges, with youth unemployment at around 50 percent and a debt ratio that is around 114 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP). Climate change compounds an already dire economic situation; impacts key sectors of the economy
Vulnerability and Governance in the Context of Climate Change in Jordan
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
In February 2024, the United Nations Environment Assembly, UNEA-6, took a significant step toward addressing the challenge of environmental scars of armed conflict. UNEA-6, held in Nairobi, Kenya, aimed to tackle the planet’s most pressing environmental issues – a complex web of problems often referred to as the "triple planetary crisis".
Strengthening Environmental Resilience in Conflict Zones: Analysis of UNEA-6 Resolution and the PERAC Principles
Brussels International Center
This paper outlines the key challenges facing policymakers ahead of this year's “Spring Meetings” of the IMF and World Bank, particularly in the context of food security challenges, global instability, and gaps in climate finance. The gap in climate finance has implications beyond sustainable development and humanitarian need.
The Elephant in the Climate Room: Financing Sustainable Security and Supporting Future-Fit Systems
Istituto Affari Internazionali
After decades of inaction, Iraq is finally moving forward in adopting a more climate friendly energy strategy. In recent weeks, it has stepped up efforts to reduce sharply the enormous amounts of natural gas that it flares into the atmosphere and pushed forward with contracts for the country’s first solar power plant
Iraq Moves to Tackle Climate Challenge
The Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington
Owing to the unique amalgamation of its climatic attributes, its geographical positioning, and the intricate interplay of geopolitics and socioeconomic conditions within the majority of its constituent nations, the MENA region is one of the most susceptible regions to the physical repercussions of climate change.
Assessing Climate Adaptation Plans in the Middle East and North Africa
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
The Middle East and North Africa region is one of the lowest recipients of climate finance compared to other areas of the globe, such as East Asia and the Pacific Islands, despite MENA’s exposure to extreme climate risks. The MENA region’s share of climate financing from the big three global climate funds — the Green Climate Fund (GCF), the Climate Investment Funds (CIF), and the Global Environment Facility (GEF).
The great financing gap: The state of climate funding in MENA
Middle East Institute
Future climate change is set to increase temperatures around the Gulf further still, rising twice as fast as the global average and pushing the cities of this rapidly growing region toward the edge of their viability as human habitats. But how did this situation come to be in the first place, and why did humans settle in such an inhospitable environment and build such cities around the Gulf waters?
Pillars of sand: The environmental fragility of Gulf cities
Middle East Institute
The report examines the impact of migration on human development and poverty reduction. It provides insights to leverage the potential of the African diaspora, build climate resilience, and harness skills mobility to drive Africa's development trajectory.
Diaspora, Climate-Induced Migration and Skills Mobility: A focus on Africa
The African Development Bank and the International Organization for Migration
The following analysis presents some of the key outcomes of COP28. It discusses the negotiating positions of major emitters and the road ahead in globally-concerted climate action to treble renewables, double energy efficiency, ‘transition away from fossil fuels’ and finance the net-zero transition, a key topic ahead of COP29, which is to take place in Baku.
COP28: the long road to transitioning away from fossil fuels
Real Instituto Elcano
Although climate change’s horrors are global—melting polar ice caps, loss of wildlife habitats, and more frequent, more powerful natural disasters like hurricanes, to name just a few—some regions bear a higher burden than others. This is especially true for forced migration due to climate change, which, for regions like the Middle East, can be particularly destabilizing
From Bad to Worse: Climate Migration in Middle East
The Lawfare Institute
If nothing is done, climate change could shrink Liberia’s economy by 15% and push 1.3 million people into poverty by 2050. Implementing just a few adaptation interventions could boost agricultural productivity and enhance climate resilience of almost 800.000 people. Priority climate actions will need to respond to essential infrastructure needs, human development promotion, sustainable land management, and climate risk and readiness.
Liberia Country and Climate Development Report
World Bank
A Review provides a discussion of future trends as established in the literature on the interaction between socioeconomic indicators and projected future climate change scenarios. It enhances our understanding of future predicted patterns of climate change effects in the coming decades and the need for climate-resilient interventions.
The socioeconomic impact of climate change in developing countries in the next decades
Center For Global Development
The Lebanon Country Climate and Development Report (CCDR) aligns the country’s short-term recovery needs with resilient, low-carbon, long-term development, building on quantitative modeling-based analytics, existing research and country diagnostics, and extensive stakeholder consultations to study the effects of climate change on Lebanon’s recovery and development objectives.
Lebanon Country Climate and Development Report
World Bank Group
More recently, a new class of small modular reactors (SMRs) for power generation have been gaining in popularity and are supposedly better suited for use in developing countries. SMRs hold the promise of driving progress towards universal access to modern energy sources and several other Sustainable Development Goals in a climate-friendly way.
Small modular reactors may have climate benefits, but they can also be climate-vulnerable
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
Climate change is a priority area in European and broader Western initiatives for global security, with a significant focus on Africa. This paper argues that advancing the climate security agenda in Africa necessitates an approach oriented towards integrating climate adaptation and finance into a ‘peace continuum’, spanning prevention, peacebuilding, and development.
Towards a peace continuum approach to climate security
Danish Institute for International Studies
Hosted by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) from November 30 to December 13, 2023, the UN Climate Change Conference (Conference of the Parties, COP28) ended with an agreement (‘UAE Consensus’) that was called historic by some observers: for the first time in the history of COP, the final communique pledged to transition away “from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner” by adopting a fossil fuel phase-out agreement in order “to achieve net zero by 2050”.
COP28, the Gulf States and the clean energy transition: No zero-sum game
Brussels International Center
Africa didn’t create the climate crisis, but we’re on its frontlines, and our women and girls are most affected. Women are primarily responsible for making up for household deficits in food, water, and income for basic needs. And it is girls’ schooling, training, and life choices that are most curtailed when difficulties arise.
Gender - Foresight Africa 2024
Brookings Institution
The Middle East & North Africa has one of the lowest rates of female labor force participation globally. The latest estimate from the World Bank shows that only 19 percent of women over the age of 15 in MENA participate in the workforce. Within the region, however, there is a wide spectrum.
A Year in Review for Women in the MENA Region: Leaps and Stumbles
Wilson Center
If COP28 started with the bang of a landmark agreement on loss and damage, it ended with a cacophony over the ‘UAE Consensus’ on the Global Stocktake (GST). Hailed as groundbreaking by hosts the UAE and criticized as insufficient by climate vulnerable groups such as the alliance of small island states (AOSIS), the agreement is in fact both
COP28: What was achieved, and what needs to happen now
Chatham House
The financing resources that are needed to face adaptation and mitigation to climate change in Tunisia are enormous. Tunisia’s climate finance gap is estimated at US$ 1.72 billion annually, which represents 3.5 percent of the countrys GDP. Under current trends, public and multilateral sources alone will not be sufficient to close this gap.
Country Focus Report 2023 - Tunisia - Mobilizing Private Sector Financing for Climate and Green Growth
African Development Bank Group
As the existential threat of climate change continues to intensify, the future of fossil fuels has been thrust into the international spotlight. Reducing hydrocarbon production and consumption, known as fossil fuel phase down, has gained traction in international climate talks during the last two years amid warnings that the window to avoid catastrophic warming is closing quickly.
In the eye of the storm: The battle over fossil fuels at COP28
Middle East Institute
Southern Iraq, once known as the Garden of Eden, is poised to become a scorching wasteland in the forthcoming decades. A study, led by this author in collaboration with the chief researcher of the Israel Meteorological Service, Dr Yoav Levi, projects that in the not-too-distant future, residents of this region will endure hours daily with temperatures soaring above 55°C.
Reading of The Week: The other looming crisis in the Middle East - Climate change
Observer Research Foundation
Africa faces a serious challenge of youth unemployment, which affects millions of young people and hampers the continent’s economic transformation potential. According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), about 13 million young people in Africa are unemployed, and around 60 million young African people are not engaged in employment, education, or training as of 2022. By 2050, Sub-Saharan Africa will have twice as many people as it has today, and more than half will be under 25 years old.
Guinée-Bissau - Mobiliser les financements du secteur privé en faveur du climat et de la croissance verte
African Center for Economic Transformation
The Oxford Institute for Energy Studies started researching the role of hydrogen in the energy transition in 2020. Since then the interest in hydrogen has continued to grow globally across the energy industry. A key research question has been the extent to which clean hydrogen can be scaled up at reasonable cost and whether it can play a significant role in the global energy system. In April 2022, OIES launched a new Hydrogen Research Programme under the overarching theme of ’building business cases for a hydrogen economy’. This overarching theme was selected based on the observation that most clean hydrogen.
Clean Hydrogen Roadmap: Is Greater Realism Leading to More Credible Paths Forward?
The Oxford Institute for Energy Studies
With increasing frequency of disasters and consequent damages, the need for high-quality, accessible and timely information on the likelihood and impacts of hydrological hazards cannot be overemphasized. ClimDev Africa Special Fund (CDSF) facilitates the development and use of climate services to effectively address the growing challenges of climate and weather disasters in Africa. The Fund has contributed to strengthening the capacities of regional, national, and local institutions as well as communities to enhance monitoring, forecasting and early warning systems.
Strengthening the Capacity to Reduce Africas Vulnerability to Climate and Weather Disasters
African Development Bank Group
This report reviews and examines the use of risk mitigation and transfer (RMT) instruments in private utility-scale renewable energy investment. The trillions of dollars needed to achieve global climate goals are more than an abstract number. They need to be channeled through viable projects that result in desirable outcomes, such as renewable energy infrastructure in developing countries.
Risk mitigation and transfer for renewable energy investments: a conceptual review
Stockholm Environment Institute
The IEA Announced Pledges Scenario estimates that increasing electric vehicles stock from 17 million units today to 808 million units by 2040 can contribute to reducing transport emissions by 36%. The benefits of transport decarbonisation are bolstered by the decarbonisation of power systems, which poses an opportunity for emerging and developing economies with ambitious variable renewable energy deployment targets.
Facilitating Decarbonisation in Emerging Economies Through Smart Charging
International Energy Agency
A convergence of entrenched insecurity and climate change is having serious socio-economic implications in South Sudan where humanitarian conditions, including food insecurity, continue to deteriorate. In 2022, 8.9 million people were in need of humanitarian assistance, out of a population of 11 million.
Improving the Prospects for Peace in South Sudan: Spotlight on Measurement
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
The report looks at the challenges associated with plastic waste generation and discusses the potential of using chemical recycling technologies as part of an ecosystem of solutions for increasing the circularity of plastics. It is based on evidence collected through desk-research and inputs provided during a series of stakeholder meetings.
Chemical recycling of plastics: Technologies, trends and policy implications
Centre for European Policy Studies
Climate change in the Middle East will amplify preexisting vulnerabilities stemming from conflict, displacement, marginalization, and corruption, while also creating new risks. Governments in the region will need to adopt more inclusive reforms as part of their climate adaptation strategies.
Climate Change and Vulnerability in the Middle East
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
This report examines the prolonged political, humanitarian and developmental challenges faced by Yemen. It offers a range of recommended actions for the international community to address these issues effectively. Yemen is grappling with a severe humanitarian crisis triggered by ongoing conflict, economic instability and climate change-related disasters. The country is experiencing escalating temperatures, rising sea levels and shifting rainfall patterns, resulting in devastating floods, droughts, water scarcity and soil degradation.
Climate, Peace and Security Fact Sheet in Yemen
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
This report summarizes findings from research by ODI, commissioned by the British Red Cross. It explores links between climate change and human mobility in the Sahel, with a specific focus on case studies on Mali and Sudan, highlighting experiences and perceptions from communities. Within the Sahel, migration has long been an important resilience strategy for people’s survival and a way to create new economic opportunities during times of both crisis and stability.
Changing climate, changing realities: migration in the Sahel
Overseas Development Institute
The agreement to resume diplomatic ties between Iran and Saudi Arabia in March 2023 marks a remarkable moment for the Gulf region. As most regional players have become aware that the traditional zero-sum game driven by ideological, political, and security competition does not bear fruit to preserve national interests, the agreement thus provides a window of opportunity for more regional cooperation.
Gulf Region Reconciliation: Boosting Climate Action and Energy Cooperation
Brussels International Center
La transition énergétique et écologique (TEE) est inéluctable, souhaitable et désormais acceptée au plan mondial. Mais le financement de cette transition demeure fort incertain. L’objet de ce Policy Paper est d’analyser les besoins de financement à considérer, et de passer en revue les différents canaux financiers possibles. Des pistes ont déjà été lancées, des procédures et des instruments sont mis en place, mais tout cela reste insuffisant. Il va falloir combiner un grand nombre de solutions, lesquelles vont exiger des innovations financières, l’application élargie des critères ESG, une adaptation de certaines réglementations bancaires et financières et plus de coopération internationale. Pour conclure, cet article propose un certain nombre de recommandations pour faciliter le financement de la TEE.
Financer la transition énergétique et écologique
Policy Center for the New South
The final conclusions of the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) were released on the 20th of March 2023.[1] It integrates the work conducted for the past five years on the Physical Science basis, Adaptation and Mitigation by the AR6 Three Working Groups, and the three special reports on limiting warming to 1.5°C, Climate Change and Land, and the Ocean and the Cryosphere. This synthesis provides the extent of science and knowledge we have on climate change from its causes, its impacts and its perspectives on the solutions. Because they translate science into concrete and quantified political objectives, IPCC statements are always significant milestones for global climate actions.
What Does the IPCC Say About Our Future?
Brussels international Center
The European Union has long played a leading role in global efforts to address climate change. In today’s fraught geopolitical environment, however, there is no inevitable logic of cooperation between global powers – on decarbonisation or on any other issue. Within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), each country now assesses its national plans on climate action as part of its wider economic security, and builds alliances accordingly.
Decarbonisation nations: How EU climate diplomacy can save the world
European Council on Foreign Relations
Israel has by far the largest AI ecosystem in the Middle East as measured in AI companies and financial investments, and foreign investors play a critical role in Israel’s AI market growth. This issue brief finds that AI investments in Israel have mostly originated from the United States. To date, Chinese investors have played a limited role in funding Israel’s dynamic AI companies. But understanding the risk of Chinese investments into the Israeli AI ecosystem will be important for the national security of both the United States and Israel.
Financing The New Oil. Assessing AI Investment in Israel and the Broader Middle East
Center for Security and Emerging Technology
thiopian women’s migration is influenced by an array of interconnected factors including environmental degradation, poverty, limited social protection, political unrest, and vulnerability to gender-based violence. These factors all potentially increase vulnerability to human trafficking. Focusing only on the risks faced during irregular travel to and work arrangements in the Arab Gulf states and Lebanon may overlook the risks involved in staying put.
Climate Change, Mobility and Human Trafficking in Ethiopia. Getting the relationship right
Danish Institute For International Studies
Since the early 1980s, the U.S. has embraced a predominantly laissez faire approach to economic development. Recently, however, there has been a momentous shift to embrace place-based industrial policy and an intentional effort to reshore “critical industries” through a multitrillion-dollar wave of legislation, including the CHIPS and Science Act (CHIPS), Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA).
The CHIPS and Science Act wont build inclusive innovation ecosystems on its own
Brookings
The cost of capital (CoC) for renewable power generation technologies is a major determinant of the total price to purchasers of renewable electricity. Both reliable data, and a deep understanding of the composition of the CoC and its drivers, are therefore critical information. Crucially, even small differences in the CoC that are not properly accounted for can result in misleading cost calculations and lead to poor policy making.
The Cost of Financing for Renewable Power
International Renewable Energy Agency
Most of the clothing and gadgets you buy in stores today were once in shipping containers, sailing across the ocean. Ships carry over 80% of the world’s traded goods. But they have a problem – the majority of them burn heavy sulfur fuel oil, which is a driver of climate change.While cargo ships’ engines have become more efficient over time, the industry is under growing pressure to eliminate its carbon footprint. European Union legislators reached an agreement to require an 80% drop in shipping fuels’ greenhouse gas intensity by 2050 and to require shipping lines to pay for the greenhouse gases their ships release. The International Maritime Organization, the United Nations agency that regulates international shipping, also plans to strengthen its climate strategy this summer.
Global shipping is under pressure to stop its heavy fuel oil use fast, that is not simple, but changes are coming
The Conversation
Complexity and uncertainty characterize the relationship between climate change, conflict and displacement. The analytical enormity of climate change, conflict and displacement as individual challenges is further amplified when these are considered collectively. In addition to being complex and uncertain, the relationship between climate change, conflict and displacement is also highly political. Political priorities and associated narratives (rather than independent and impartial evidence) determine how climate change, conflict and displacement are conceptualized and addressed.
Living with climate change, conflict and displacement
Overseas Development Institute
Food security in Egypt is under threat due to many domestic and external challenges, such as climate change, water scarcity, global instability and disruption of supply chains, especially during the Russian Ukrainian crisis, and the economic deficit and need for reforms, particularly in the post-COVID era. This threat is expected to worsen in the near and distant future.
The Egyptian Holistic Approach to promote food security and tackle related challenges
Euromesco
The World Energy Transitions Outlook outlines a vision for the transition of the energy landscape to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement, presenting a pathway for limiting global temperature rise to within 1.5°C of pre-industrial levels and bringing CO2 emissions to net zero by mid-century.
World Energy Transitions Outlook 2023
International Renewable Energy Portal
Climate change threatens sustainable development in Africa, particularly among poor and highly vulnerable countries which have contributed least to greenhouse gas emissions. The African Development Bank Group (hereafter the “Bank” or “AfDB”) has had a longstanding commitment to action on climate change and green growth, to ensure that development across the continent brings about growth that is not only economically empowering but also decarbonized, climate-friendly, environmentally sustainable, and socially inclusive.
Climate Change and Green Growth Strategic Framework: Operationalising Africas Voice - Action Plan 2021-2025
African Development Bank Group
For decades, climate researchers have highlighted the unprecedented emissions reductions necessary if we are to meet global mitigation ambitions. To achieve these reductions, the climate change mitigation scenarios that dominate the literature assume large-scale deployment of negative-emissions technologies, but such technologies are unproven and present considerable trade-offs for biodiversity and food systems. In response, energy researchers have postulated low energy demand scenarios as alternatives and others have developed models for estimating the minimum energy requirements for the provision of decent material living standards considered essential for human wellbeing.
Reducing global inequality to secure human wellbeing and climate safety: a modelling study
The Lancet Planetary Health
In 2021, a diverse group of actors - from scientists to social activists, practitioners to academics - organized a global citizens’ assembly for that year’s UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow. The Global Assembly was an attempt to redress some of the failings of the COP process of climate summits, which have been running for almost thirty years.
A Global Citizens Assembly on the Climate and Ecological Crisis
Carnegie Europe
The MENA and Sahel regions are suffering from climate-induced phenomena that are accelerating societal tensions and translating into insecurity. These regions are safe havens for violent extremism and non-state actors, who easily recruit young men willing to engage in behavioural radicalisation to sustain their families. Whilst in Syria, ISIS has been weaponizing water and resources to intimidate populations and coerce their enemies, in the Lake Chad Basin Boko Haram is recruiting members of local communities deprived of their harvest and fishing due to climate unpredictability and the disruption of the water cycle.
The nexus between climate change and terrorism: An analysis of ISIS weaponization of water in Syria and Boko Haram activities in the Lake Chad Basin
Finabel - European Army Interoperability Centre
In recent months, the Ukraine war has underscored the centrality of the debate on national and regional energy strategies to global economic and geopolitical security as well as the climate crisis. This paper looks at how three of the major Gulf energy actors – Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates – have reacted to the pressures of recent geopolitical developments as well as the longer-term trend of the global shift towards cleaner energy. There are precedents for state actors, including Gulf actors, to focus in on the renewable energy sector as part of wider energy efforts during periods of uncertainty and instability across the international system.
Transforming the Renewables Sector in the Gulf: The Evolving Strategies of Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE
Al Jazeera
Cultural heritage plays a major role in shaping our identities, enriching our spiritual existence, providing social cohesion and helping us to understand our past. Throughout history, people have experienced loss and damage to their cultural heritage due to war, colonialism, displacement, tourism and other forces, but now there is a new threat: climate change.
What do we have to lose? Understanding and responding to climate-induced loss and damage to cultural heritage
Overseas Development Institute
Climate change threatens to reduce the water flow in the Nile and increase the frequency and severity of droughts and floods in Egypt, which already suffers from water scarcity. This threat is a looming crisis as it seriously undermines the Government of Egypt’s long standing food self-sufficiency approach to food security, an approach which is wasteful of increasingly precious arable land and water resources, while achieving neither more food self-sufficiency nor meaningful food security for the poor and vulnerable.
Short of Water and Under Increasing Pressure to Deliver Food Security: Key Policy Considerations the Case of the Arab Republic of Egypt
Police Center for the New South
Climate change is increasing the frequency and scope of security challenges. This calls for greater collaboration across formerly often siloed policy fields, as illustrated in the context of climate change adaptation by Swiss Civil Protection and Switzerland’s priorities on the UN Security Council
Readings of the Week: The Climate Change. Security Interface
Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich
In the first two weeks of November 2022, all eyes were riveted on Sharm El-Sheikh. This year, Egypt welcomed world leaders to discuss climate actions at the 27th edition of the Conference of the Parties (COP) between the 6th and the 18th of November. Following the green momentum the world displayed during COP26, with the formulation of more ambitious commitments on finance, coal, carbon neutrality, and deforestation, the objectives of this year were announced loud and clear: “COP27 must be remembered as the ‘Implementation COP’ - the one where we restore the grand bargain that is at the centre of the Paris Agreement”.
Decoding the Achievements and Failures of the Cop27: The Way Forward for More Effective Global Climate Policy
Brussels International Center
The African continent (20 percent of the planet’s land) is home to one-quarter of the world’s mammal species and one-fifth of the world’s bird species. At least one-sixth of the world’s plant species are endemic to Africa. The continent also boasts 369 wetlands of international importance.
More than 62 percent of Africa’s rural population rely on the continent’s diverse natural ecosystems for their food, water, energy, health, and secure livelihood needs. This biodiversity provides an arsenal of genetic capital beneficial not just to the people living in these ecosystems but to the world.
African Biodiversity Loss Raises Risk to Human Security
African Center for Strategic Studies
The forested swamps of the central Congo Basin store approximately 30 billion metric tonnes of carbon in peat. Little is known about the vulnerability of these carbon stocks. Here we investigate this vulnerability using peat cores from a large interfluvial basin in the Republic of the Congo and palaeoenvironmental methods. We find that peat accumulation began at least at 17,500 calibrated years before present.
Hydroclimatic vulnerability of peat carbon in the central Congo Basin
Nature
Rising ocean levels threaten dozens of Africa’s rapidly expanding coastal metropolises, resulting in shrinking land area, coastal flooding, more powerful storm surges, and the need for better mitigation. African coastlines have experienced a steady rise in sea levels for four decades. At the current pace, sea levels are projected to rise by 0.3 meters by 2030, affecting 117 million Africans.
Rising Sea Levels Besieging Africas Booming Coastal Cities
Africa Center for Strategic Studies
Losses and damages are increasingly felt across the globe, with the most vulnerable countries and populations most affected. At the same time, processes around Loss and Damage under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change are characterized by divergent positions and slow progress.
Making Headway on Loss and Damage
Danish Institute for International Studies
The MED This Week newsletter provides expert analysis and informed comments upon the MENA region’s most significant issues and trends. Today, we place the spotlight upon COP27, the 27th annual UN meeting, hosted this year in the Egyptian city of Sharm El-Sheikh.
COP 27: Relaunching Climate Action in a Burning MENA region
The Mediterranean Dialogue
Climate change and environmental changes are increasingly prominent drivers of migration. The great majority of individuals displaced find refuge within their own country, while some are forced to cross international borders. By 2050, according to the World Bank’s Groundswell report, up to 216 million people across six world regions could be forced to move internally within their countries.
How Can We Protect Climate Refugees
Baker Institute
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 3.3 to 3.6 billion people are highly vulnerable to climate change effects, especially “in locations with poverty, governance challenges and limited access to basic services and resources, violent conflict and high levels of climate-sensitive livelihoods”.
Changing Opinions: Climate and the Arab Population
Brussels International Center
As a potent greenhouse gas with a high global warming potential, assumed to be 34 times that of CO2 over a 100-year period, methane is responsible for more than one-fifth of total global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Reducing anthropogenic methane emissions would have a drastic mitigation effect on climate change but requires an understanding of the largest sources of emissions to target abatement interventions more effectively.
Methane in Africa
African Development Bank
The 27th UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) COP is scheduled to take place in Egypt from 7–18 November 2022. This will be the first time COP is hosted on the African continent since 2016, when Morocco hosted COP22. This year’s COP will address much of the unfinished business of the COP26 Glasgow Climate Summit, convened in November 2021. This includes addressing the potentially negative externalities of climate policies and the need for a just transition, establishing the necessary financial structures to support loss and damage, enhancing adaptation and implementing climate policies.
Reading of the Week: Ensuring that COP27 is Truly an African COP
The South African Institute of International Affairs
As efforts to mitigate and adapt to the impacts of climate change fall short, discussions around loss and damage (L&D) resulting from climate change have gained urgency. These discussions pivot on questions around financing, which remains very limited. Going into the twenty-seventh UN Climate Change Conference (COP27), the call for a new L&D financial mechanism has been raised by developing countries.
Options for a Loss and Damage Financial Mechanism
International Peace Institute
The aim of this research is to assist the African Natural Resources Management and Investment Centre (ANRC), an entity of the African Development Bank (AfDB), to meet its commitment to advise regional member countries (RMCs) on important aspects of natural resource management and to ensure nature fully supports Africa’s future economic development objectives. With support from the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF), this ambitious, nature-positive development agenda acknowledges the magnitude and importance of climate and nature for the future sustainability of regional member countries and will transform the sustainable development narrative.
Debt for Nature Swaps
African Development Bank Group
Climate change, combined with extensive environmental destruction caused by nearly a decade of conflict, threatens to exacerbate existing tensions in Yemen. The conflict has contributed to the decimation of critical resources, such as water and agricultural land, and led to the loss of livelihoods and forced displacement. All these factors have the potential to lead to new conflicts in Yemen, warns Center for Civilians in Conflict (CIVIC) in its new report.
Reading of the Week. Risking the Future. Climate Change, Environmental Destruction, and Conflict in Yemen
Center for Civilians in Conflict
The chemicals sector is one of the three highest-emission industrial sectors globally and within the United States. It is far more diversified in terms of products and processes than the other two leaders, steel and cement, and therefore its solution set for emissions reduction is likely to be more diverse as well. George Mason University’s Center for Energy Science and Policy recently published a first-of-its-kind, bottom-up model of the cost and emissions impact of decarbonizing
a major chemical industry value chain, “Pathways to Decarbonize the PVC Value Chain in 2050.”
Decarbonizing the Chemical Industry. Policy Insights from a Case Study of PVC
Information Technology & Innovation Foundation
Europe is witnessing an unprecedented energy crisis with gas prices up by eight times their ten-year average. As of August 2022, EU countries have spent 281 billion euros to curb the impact of the crisis on households and businesses. A significant portion of the crisis is due to Europe’s overreliance on Russian hydrocarbons, specifically following the Russian Gazprom’s indefinite suspension of its pipeline flow to Europe, a way to leverage European sanctions following the invasion of Ukraine.
Europes Energy Crisis and the Opportunity for an EU-Algeria Renewable Energy Cooperation
Brussels International Center
Climate change causes changes in the physical environment, such as increased frequency and intensity of hurricanes or heatwaves, sea level rise and variability in rainfall and temperature patterns (IPCC 2020). In turn, these physical impacts could affect investments, accumulation of human capital and economic growth
Climate Change Vulnerability and Currency Returns
Financial Analyst Journal
Ilesha, Nigeria - In his early twenties, Simeon Abolarinwa did the grown-up thing of making a curriculum vitae for the first time. At the bottom of the document, he listed his hobbies: hunting, hiking and fishing. Unlike many of his peers doing the same to fill space or boost their profiles, these were actually his hobbies.
Reading of the Week: Gold and the goddess, How mining polluted Nigerias sacred Osun river
Al Jazeera
Climate change is at the forefront of national and international agendas. Around the world, calls for climate action are coming from international organizations, civil society, the private sector, social and political leaders and youth, amongst others. The effects of climate change are already abruptly affecting labour markets and employment. Droughts, heat waves, heavy incessant rains, sea level rise, rising temperatures and changing rainfall patterns have displaced workers, disrupted business operations and farming seasons, damaged business assets and infrastructure, and negatively impacted working conditions, occupational health and safety and labour productivity.
Mainstreaming Climate Change and Green Growth into the Project cycle for Lines of Credit
African Development Bank Group
NATO must prepare for climate change impacts in order to effectively preserve peace and security in the Euro-Atlantic region. The Alliance does not need to transform under the climate lens; it has substantive assets and capabilities, together with consultation and decision-making mechanisms, to lead the Allies as they confront climate disruptions, a security environment of climate-related instability, and new geostrategic competition.
Reading Of The Week: NATO and Climate Change A Climatized Perspective on Security
Harvard Kennedy School
For the past two decades, literature has been exploring the interconnection between conflicts and climate change. However, their link is still debated, the latter being commonly identified as a ‘threat multiplier’ on political, security and socioeconomic drivers for intrastate violence. Only a few literatures have yet examined specifically the interactions between climate change and terrorism, and even fewer have been applying them to the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) context. Although ambiguous, there is a tangible nexus between the two phenomena, probable to broaden in the future as global warming will continue to increase, which is particularly relevant to explore in the MENA context.
Exploring the Climate-Terror Nexus in the MENA Region
Brussels International Center
Exactly six months ahead of the UNFCCC COP27 summit hosted by Egypt and immediately following the UNCCD COP15 summit hosted by Côte d’Ivoire, the 25-27 May 2022 Ibrahim Governance Forum aimed to help inform and articulate Africa’s position in the global debate around climate change.
Reading of the Week: The Road to COP27: Making Africas Case in the Global Climate Debate
Mo Ibrahim Foundation
The Russian invasion of Ukraine marks a historical turning point for the European Union’s security and energy policy. Long-held policy tenets are quickly being reversed, and a new European energy map is being redesigned at speed. Amid this unprecedented energy overhaul, the EU and the United States have fl agged their commitment to reinforce their bilateral energy partnership, starting with short-term measures to boost US liquefi ed natural gas (LNG) supplies to Europe to promptly replace part of Russian gas imports.
A Transatlantic Energy and Climate Pact Is Now More Necessary Than Ever
Bruegel's Weekly Newsletter
Against a backdrop of increasing scientific concern and public awareness about the climate crisis, UNDP set out to review if policymakers were keeping the promises they made in 2019 when the global state of climate ambition was assessed with UNFCCC in the first NDC Global Outlook report, The Heat is On. We were curious. Is the Paris Agreement working?
And if yes, then who is doing the work? Which countries are leading the way on ambition – and which ones are falling behind?
Reading Of The Week: The State of Climate Ambition
United Nations Development Programme
We have been hearing about transitions in the Middle East for years now. There was the hoped-for democratic transition, which has been a bust. There is an energy transition looming. There is, arguably, a water transition afoot as aquifer depletion, surface-water exhaustion, and climate change all combine to make a mostly arid region profoundly more so. But an equally profound transition may be one few are talking about: a labor transition that may reorder the economics, politics, and society of the entire Middle East, from Casablanca to Tehran.
The Middle East Transition We Need to Talk About
Center for Strategic and International Studies
At COP26 in Glasgow in 2021 the Paris Rulebook was finalized. The rulebook provides practical guidance on implementing the Paris Agreement, which includes guidance on transparency and reporting on Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) through an Enhanced Transparency Framework (ETF). NDCs communicate each country’s national commitments to climate change and are submitted to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) every five years. The ETF will ensure that countries report on their NDC implementation through the standardized submission and review of biennial transparency reports. With the final due date for the first such submissions set for 2024, NDC reporting and transparency are at the forefront of national and international climate action.
Enhancing the Transparency and Accountability of Climate Reporting under the Paris Agreement
Among the many initiatives announced as part of the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) in 2021, few generated as much interest as the Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP) between South Africa and a handful of Group of Seven (G7) members. Through this deal, the international community committed around US$8.5 billion to support the Government of South Africa to decarbonize its energy sector, which is dominated by coal and weighed down by a debt-laden state power company – Eskom.
Emerging Analysis Country Platforms for Climate Action
Overseas Development Institute (ODI)
Infrastructure and sanitation conditions in the Gaza Strip, one of the world’s most densely populated areas, are extremely poor, including shortages of water, energy, electricity, food, and health services. Gaza’s humanitarian challenge is likely to only worsen, given the demographic trends in the Stripand its acute vulnerability to climate change.
The Gaza Strip and the Climate Crisis
Institute for National Security Studies
While Africa has contributed the least to the climate crisis, it is the most exposed to its devastating consequences. Out of the 25 countries deemed most vulnerable to climate change, 14 are conflict-ridden. The compromised capacities of governments and communities to deal with climate threats and the inaction towards climate adaptation and mitigation, and the prevention of climate-related risks have cascaded into a multitude of threats and challenges, including that of forced displacement.
Reading of the Week: The Climate-Displacement Nexus in Africa: Implications for Sustainable Peace and Development
Cairo International Center for Conflict Resolution, Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding (CCCPA)
Modern methods of food production are increasingly recognized as a major contributor to global warming, air and water pollution, deforestation, biodiversity loss, soil degradation and the emergence of disease. This paper seeks to clarify the debate around sustainability in agriculture by examining two distinct versions of sustainability. Each is discussed in terms of its clearly defined underpinning assumptions, including the key question of whether large-scale changes in demand towards healthier, less wasteful and more sustainable diets are possible.
Reading of the WeeK: Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems
Chatham House
Electrolysis of water, using renewable electricity, is the sustainable option to produce green hydrogen as an attractive low-carbon energy carrier. To respond to the growing demand for renewables-based hydrogen, an extraordinary expansion of the market for electrolysers is needed linked to a significant capacity increase in the manufacture and deployment of electrolysers. A rapid reduction in electrolyser system costs is essential and technology innovation is crucial to this end.
Innovation Trends in Electrolysers for Hydrogen Production
IRENA
Africa is one of the areas that are most vulnerable to both climate change and conflict. Despite contributing very little to the changing climate, the continent still bears the brunt of the resultant impacts.
The Climate Conflict Nexus in Africa: A Conflict Sensitive Approach
SAIIA