Daily Star by Rami G. Khouri, Saturday, September 19, 2009.

Photo: Tanya Traboulsi. Sky over sea, Beirut, Lebanon.

The amount and quality of available scientific data on the global impact of climate change, I rediscovered at a seminar organized by the Danish Foreign Ministry in Copenhagen this week, is staggering. The debate that swirled around the issues of climate change and global warming just two or three years ago has vanished. There is much more certainty now on the nature and extent of the changes to the Earth’s climate that can be attributed to the impact of human activity, mainly the burning of fossil fuels that emit greenhouse gases.

The collective technical knowledge of humankind, however, is not yet matched by parallel political will to act early and decisively enough to reduce the consequences of climate change, and nowhere is this more evident than in the Middle East. The contrast between the actions of European countries – individually or collectively via the European Union – and the relative inaction in the Arab world is also staggering.

Equally dangerous is an emerging new trend in global climate change analysis and pre-emptive policymaking that sees climate change consequences as a security issue, rather than merely as a matter of environmental or economic consequence. Countries hard hit by climate change that do not take early mitigation or adaptation measures, it is feared, will suffer severe consequences and become a menace to themselves and to others. These consequences could include large-scale population displacements, job losses, food and water shortages, social and political strife, unchecked migration, waves of “climate refugees,” and armed conflicts over water or land.

The danger of addressing climate change challenges primarily as a security threat was succinctly noted in a report published this year that provides a terrific synthesis of our knowledge of the causes and consequences of climate change. The compact but rich 36-page report, titled “Climate Change: Global risks, challenges and decisions-Synthesis Report,” summarized the deliberations of 12 leading international scholars who met in Copenhagen in March under the aegis of the International Alliance of Research Universities.

In the document, University of Copenhagen professor Ole Waever, a leading scholar of international relations security theory, wrote that not only can climate change exacerbate conflicts and increase strains and violence among competing groups, but also that “[w]hen issues are cast in security terms, leaders get increased latitude for dramatic measures. It is crucial that this ‘security-driven empowerment’ in the case of climate change gets ‘channeled’ into strengthening of international institutions, and not unilateral emergency acts. Factoring security into the climate change equation runs the risk of escalating vicious circles. In the parts of the world where health and wellbeing are most negatively impacted by climate change, the likelihood of conflict will increase most, and these conflicts will further reduce living standards.”

The security-climate change nexus is critical for the Middle East, which is setting itself up for a catastrophe if individual countries do not soon summon the political will to acknowledge the likely consequences of climate change, and act preemptively to deal with them. In a region that is already fully or semi-arid, with its concomitant negative impact on agriculture, and major cities burgeoning out of control due to high birth and rural-to-urban migration rates, unchecked climate change that raises the average temperature by two degrees Centigrade is certain to aggravate the series of trends that have already turned our region into a showcase of incompetent public management and poor governance.

These trends include declining per capita available fresh water resources, degradation of water quality, urban hyper-growth, rising food costs, and widening disparities among populations when it comes to such indicators as income, health and social services, water and sanitation services, food quality, education, and overall quality of life.

The signs to date suggest that most Arab countries in the past generation have been unable to manage public services, the economy, and the equitable distribution of, and access to, national resources in a manner allowing the living standards of most citizens to improve. Rather, a small slice of Arabs has enjoyed significant wealth or very comfortable living standards, while the majority has remained mired in low-income living conditions – conditions not desperate enough to foment social or political unrest, but that also do not allow the bulk of citizens to graduate into a solid middle class life characterized by security, hope and wellbeing.

At a recent seminar at the American University of Beirut that brought together climate change researchers in four Levant countries, participants discussed the fact that massive quantities of fresh water are being pumped out of the ground and used by private interests, without the regulation of the state. Consistent over-exploitation of underground aquifers has seen available fresh water supplies decline steadily in many if not most Arab countries.

Water allocation, pricing, re-use, storage and conveyance are also widely mismanaged throughout the Middle East. It is difficult to see how a region that has been unable to master the most basic aspects of integrated water resources management can possibly muster the skills and political will to deal with the far more serious challenges of climate change. A resort to climate matters as a security issue is always possible in a region where security agencies dominate society and lead to severe distortions that partly account for the moribund state of Arab society.

The early warning signs are clear for all to see, and the scientific knowledge needed to deal with the challenges and potential threats is widely available to anyone with an internet connection. In the late 1970s, we were warned about imminent stress resulting from population growth, urban sprawl, arable land misuse, and water shortages. We did virtually nothing about all these issues, and they have blossomed into veritable crises that plague a majority of our citizens today, though the leaderships and elites are shielded from the pain.

We would look like world class idiots if we again ignored the early warnings about climate change, where the potential consequences are much direr. Amateurish national natural resource management for a generation should be as much as any people should be expected to suffer.