Tackling transboundary climate risks in the Middle East and North Africa
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Transboundary climate risks in the MENA region
The cascading and transboundary nature of climate challenges—disrupting migration, trade, financial flows, and natural resource management—poses significant implications for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Adaptation efforts in one country may also unintentionally create new risks in other countries by shifting rather than reducing vulnerabilities.
These challenges are compounded by the region’s socio-economic weaknesses and governance deficits, including limited decentralisation and weak civil society empowerment. Table 1 gives an overview of various types of transboundary climate risks in the MENA region.
However, the region’s tendency towards ‘excessive bilateralism’ and lack of unified political interests further hinder effective regional collaboration on climate risks and particularly in managing shared water resources, energy production, and trade and transport corridors. With more extreme climate impacts projected, the cost of inaction will be high, leaving the MENA region vulnerable to transboundary climate risks from within and beyond the region.
Managing transboundary climate risks
Governance deficits, such as centralised power structures, exclusion from decision-making, and inefficient resource allocation, weaken resilience-building efforts at both national and regional levels. Many MENA countries operate under highly centralised, patronage-based systems that rely heavily on oil and gas revenues. While centralisation can streamline responses to climate impacts, it also presents challenges. These governments frequently prioritise rent-seeking behaviours over urgent climate action and tend to exclude civil society, women, youth, and other vulnerable groups from decision-making processes—groups that are often at the forefront of identifying adaptive solutions and highlighting maladaptation.
Barriers to adaptation finance in the MENA region
International adaptation finance could help MENA societies reduce their vulnerability and mitigate spillover impacts, such funding has been limited despite the significant need in the region. Table 2 outlines varying adaptation financing needs across countries, mainly based on their National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) and Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).
Although there is increasing international investment in large-scale renewable energy projects in the MENA region, these projects offer limited adaptation benefits and are often perceived as primarily serving export markets. Figure 1 shows that during 2003-2023, flows to initiatives classified as climate change mitigation amounted to $1.12 billion, approximately three times more than flows targeting adaptation ($346 million). Most of this finance was in the form of loans or concessional loans dedicated to renewable energy mega-projects and provided by the Clean Technology Fund (CTF) and the Green Climate Fund (GCF).
Case study: European adaptation finance to the MENA region
Despite the EU’s acknowledgement of climate change as an ‘existential threat’ in its strategic agenda for 2019–2024, its priorities up to 2029 show minimal emphasis on climate and ecological transition. European climate adaptation finance allocated to the MENA region for the period 2012-2021 has been low compared to the region’s substantial needs and allocations to other regions.
Looking ahead, while the EU’s current priorities may limit adaptation finance, global pressures and the rising prevalence of transboundary risks in a warming, more unpredictable world might drive an increase in adaptation funding. This anticipated shift also underscores the need for broader changes in how multilateral finance mechanisms address these complex challenges.
Conclusions and recommendations
The adaptation finance gap, combined with governance challenges, leaves the MENA region unprepared to handle transboundary climate risks, which in turn also have cascading consequences for other connected regions.
Amid a rapidly evolving global landscape, collaborative efforts between international partners and the MENA region are crucial to address transboundary climate risks and to ultimately foster inclusive development, peace, and regional stability. How can policymakers from the MENA region and international partners, along with private sectors and civil society, enhance cooperation to address these challenges? This question underscores the need for action on four critical fronts:
- Knowledge, tools and innovation, to understand and manage the complexity and uncertainty of transboundary climate risks based on transformative adaptation approaches;
- Policy coherence, to overcome the incoherence between various policy domains such as climate, development, security and trade;
- Diplomacy and cooperation between the MENA region and its international partners to manage shared risks across scales;
- Finance, including innovative instruments from inter-national partners and domestic resources to sup- port adaptation to transboundary climate risks and strengthen systemic resilience in the MENA region.
The final Table 3 presents concrete policy recommendations for MENA policymakers across four key action areas.
Suggested citation
Knaepen, H. (2024). Tackling transboundary climate risks in the Middle East and North Africa. Adaptation Without Borders Policy Brief 4. ECDPM.
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