A Catch 22 or an Opportunity? Climate change and instability in the Middle East and North Africa

The cases of Syria and Egypt

Francesco Femia and Caitlin E. WerrellCo-DirectorsThe Center for Climate and Securitywww.climateandsecurity.org

Climate-Water-Food Nexus

• Climate Change manifests itself primarily through water and food

• Admiral Titley, USN (ret): “It’s all about the water”– Variability

• Too much• Too little• Wrong place, wrong time• Wet where it was dry• Dry where it was wet• Drier where it was dry• Salty where it was fresh• Change in chemistry

• And the food: Increased water insecurity due to climate variability, both globally and in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), has a significant effect on food security in the region

Syria: Drought

• 2007-2010: Worst drought in Syria’s history of records

• 2011 Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction (GAR):– Farmers: Of those

most vulnerable, 75% suffer total crop failure

– Herders in northeast: Lose 85% of their livestock, affecting 1.3 million people

Standard Precipitation Index (SPI) (-1 = moderate drought; -2 = extreme drought). Drought, Five-year Scale, Syria from 2006 to 2012

Source: Werrell, Femia and Sternberg, “Did We See it Coming? State Fragility, Climate Vulnerability, and the Uprisings in Syria and Egypt,” SAIS Review of International Affairs, Volume 35, Number 1, Winter-Spring 2015, pp. 29-46

Source: W. Erian et al., Drought Vulnerability in the Arab Region Special Case Study: Syria (Geneva: United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction, 2010), pp11.

Livelihoods decimated

• 2009 UN and IFRC: 800,000 Syrians lost entire livelihood as a result of the droughts

• 2010 UN: 2-3 million driven into extreme poverty

• 2011 GAR: 1 million Syrians left “extremely food insecure” by droughts

Source: F. Femia and C. Werrell, 2012. ‘Syria: Climate Change, Drought and Social Unrest’, The Center for Climate and Security, 29 Feb. 2012.

Internal displacement

• October 2010: UN estimates 50,000 families migrated from rural areas just that year, “on top of the hundreds of thousands of people who fled in earlier years.”

• January 2011: crop failures just in farming villages around Aleppo lead “200,000 rural villagers to leave for the cities.”

• Total 2007-2011: 1.3 – 1.5 million people displaced, most move to urban areas.

Source: F. Femia and C. Werrell, 2012. ‘Syria: Climate Change, Drought and Social Unrest’, The Center for Climate and Security, 29 Feb. 2012.

Climate change• 2011 NOAA: High likelihood winter drying

from 1971-2010 in Mediterranean littoral and Middle East linked to climate change. Syria one of driest.

• 2015 Kelley et al: 2007-2010 drought 2-3x more likely due to climate change

• IFPRI climate model: If current rates of global greenhouse gas emissions continue, yields of rainfed crops in Syria may decline “between 29 and 57 percent from 2010 to 2050.”

Reds and oranges highlight lands around the Mediterranean that experienced significantly drier winters during 1971-2010 than the comparison period of 1902-2010

Source: M. Hoerling et al., “On the Increased Frequency of Mediterranean Drought,” Journal of Climate 25 (2012), pp.2146–61.

Sources:M. Hoerling et al., “On the Increased Frequency of Mediterranean Drought,” Journal of Climate 25 (2012), pp.2146–61.

Kelley, Colin et al, 2015. Climate change in the Fertile Crescent and implications of the recent Syrian drought. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Impact Factor: 9.81). 03/2015; 112(11)

C. Breisinger et al, 2010. “Food Security and Economic Development in the Middle East and North Africa: Discussion Paper 00985,” International Food Policy Research Institute.

Climate change

Winter precipitation trends in the Mediterranean region for the period 1902 – 2010 (Hoerling et al. 2011).

Natural resource mismanagement

• Heavily-subsidized water-intensive wheat and cotton farming• Encouragement of inefficient irrigation techniques: e.g. flood

irrigation – 60% of water used is wasted• Over-pumping of groundwater: Syria’s National Agricultural

Policy Center: increase in wells tapping aquifers from “just over 135,000 in 1999 to more than 213,000 in 2007…caused groundwater levels to plummet in many parts of the country...”

• 2007: Syria consumed 19.2 billion cubic metres of water - 3.5 billion more than the amount of water replenished naturally

• Some evidence of well-drilling contracts awarded on sectarian basisSource: F. Femia and C. Werrell, 2012. ‘Syria: Climate Change, Drought and Social Unrest’, The Center for Climate and Security,

29 Feb. 2012.

Demographics & desertification

• Over-grazing of land• Rapidly growing population• Rising demand for meat from growing and

increasingly affluent population• Contributes to land degradation and water

insecurity

Source: F. de Châtel, 2014. The Role of Drought and Climate Change in the Syrian Uprising: Untangling the Triggers of the Revolution. Middle Eastern Studies. Vol. 50, Iss. 4, 2014, pp. 3)

Pressure on urban areas

• Context: Syrian cities coping with influxes of Iraqi refugees since 2003, steady influx of Palestinian refugees, and from 2007-2011, around 1.5 million Syrian farmers and herders

• Cities already experiencing serious water infrastructure deficiencies – e.g. Damascus water network leaks up to 60 percent of the water it carries, according to local authorities

• 2007-2011: Francesca de Châtel: Syria experienced a “huge deterioration of [water] availability per capita,” partly as a result of a crumbling urban infrastructure.

Source: F. Femia and C. Werrell, 2012. ‘Syria: Climate Change, Drought and Social Unrest’, The Center for Climate and Security, 29 Feb. 2012.

Rural communities & unrest• Role of disaffected rural communities in early Syrian

opposition movement prominent compared to equivalents in other “Arab uprising” countries.

• 2011: Rural farming town of Dara’a focal point for protests in early stages of the opposition movement – a place especially hard hit by five years of drought and water scarcity

Source: F. Femia and C. Werrell, 2012. ‘Syria: Climate Change, Drought and Social Unrest’, The Center for Climate and Security, 29 Feb. 2012.

Egypt– Produces little of its own

food/ essential staples (bread)

– Depends on stability of global wheat market

– Net grain importer (one of 8 of 10 MENA nations most dependent on global wheat market)

– Bread subsidies insufficient to control price

Source: ERS, Food CPI and Expenditures Briefing Room, Table 97, 2011. Cited in: Troy Sternberg, “Chinese drought, bread and the Arab Spring,” Applied Geography 34 (2012): 519–524.

Per Capita Top Wheat Importing Countries, Percent Income Spent on Food and Average Age

Drought in China and Russia

• 2010 drought in China• 2010 heat wave in Russia (more likely due

to climate change)*• Wheat harvests devastated• China and Russia purchase significant

amount of wheat on global market• Global wheat prices spike – Egypt affected

Drought at One- to-Three-Month Timescales November 2010 through January 2011. Standard Precipitation Index (SPI).

Source: Werrell, Femia and Sternberg, “Did We See it Coming? State Fragility, Climate Vulnerability, and the Uprisings in Syria and Egypt,” SAIS Review of International Affairs, Volume 35, Number 1, Winter-Spring 2015, pp. 29-46

*Sources:

Stefan Rahmstorf and Dim Coumou, “Increase of Extreme

Events in a Warming World,” Proceedings of the National

Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 108, no.

44 (November 2011): 17905–17909.

Friederike E. L. Otto et al., “Reconciling Two Approaches to Attribution of the 2010 Russian Heat Wave,” Geophysical Research Letters 39, no. 4 (February 2012).

(-1=drought; -2=extreme drought)

Rural bread riots coincide with Tahrir square

• Bread prices rise 300% in Egypt• Bread subsidies regime

corrupt, does not affect price of bread in rural areas

• At least three major reported bread riots in 2011

• May have broadened appeal of uprising beyond urban areas

Sources:

Werrell, Femia and Sternberg, “Did We See it Coming? State Fragility, Climate Vulnerability, and the Uprisings in Syria and Egypt,” SAIS Review of

International Affairs, Volume 35, Number 1, Winter-Spring 2015, pp. 29-46

Marco Lagi et al., “The Food Crises and Political Instability in North Africa and the Middle East,” New England Complex Systems Institute, August 10,

2011.

Syria and Egypt: Environmental Security Drivers

• Environmental security variables and attendant impacts generally missing from analysis of Syria and Egypt fragility

• Complexity

• Outdated predictive tools and indices?

Source: Werrell, Femia and Sternberg, “Did We See it Coming? State Fragility, Climate Vulnerability, and the Uprisings in Syria and Egypt,” SAIS Review of International Affairs, Volume 35, Number 1, Winter-Spring 2015, pp. 29-46

Syria: Immune to the Arab uprisings?

• Many political & intelligence analysts predict Syria is immune to drivers that precipitated the Arab uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya

• Obama administration: Developed list of nations likely to be at risk of large-scale political turmoil: Syria at bottom of list.

• “No one was focused on Syria, because it seemed far less likely than other states in the region…” – U.S. Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg

Source: J.Mann. 2012. ‘The Obamians: The Struggle Inside the White House to Redefine American Power’, pg 270, Viking Press.

Catch-22…Self-sufficient, or dependent on global food market, countries are vulnerable to climate risks.

• Syria by 2050: Rainfed crops decrease up to 57%

• Nile Delta:

• 30-40% Egypt’s agriculture production

• 30% Egypt labor force agrarian

• Alexandria Egypt – 0.5 meter rise seas would displace 2 mil people.

Alexandria, EgyptSources:

F. Femia and C. Werrell, 2012. ‘Syria: Climate Change, Drought and Social Unrest’, The Center for Climate and Security, 29 Feb. 2012.

F. Femia and C. Werrell, 2011, ‘’Egypt’s Political Transition and the Rising Sea: An Opportunity for Reform’, The Center for Climate and Security, 16 Jan. 2012

Or opportunity…

• Solutions could be leveraged for conflict-resolution• Historical precedent of cooperation between conflicting

parties over scarce water resources, in particular*• Resources devoted to climate adaptation in the region

must become a higher development and security priority• Climate adaptation should become a new form of

development and security assistance• Alternatives to water-intensive crop production, and

flood irrigation

*Source: Wolf, A. T. "International Water Conflict Resolution: Lessons from Comparative Analysis." International Journal of Water Resources Development. Vol. 13 #3, December 1997.

Lessons for analysis

• Environmental/ natural resource security variables are unexplored potential drivers of unrest in Syria and Egypt

• More research needed to disentangle lines of causality

• Environmental security/ natural resource variables need better integration into indices and predictive tools on state fragility, conflict, global risks, etc.

Source: World Economic Forom, Global Risks Report 2014

Source: Werrell, Femia and Sternberg, “Did We See it Coming? State Fragility, Climate Vulnerability, and the Uprisings in Syria and Egypt,” SAIS Review of International Affairs,

Volume 35, Number 1, Winter-Spring 2015, pp. 29-46

Questions?• Francesco Femia: ffemia@climateandsecurity.org

• The Center for Climate and Security: www.climateandsecurity.org

• Climate and Security 101: www.climatesecurity101.org

• F. Femia and C. Werrell, 2012. ‘Syria: Climate Change, Drought and Social Unrest ’, The Center for Climate and Security, 29 Feb. 2012.

• Werrell, Femia and Sternberg, “Did We See it Coming? State Fragility, Climate Vulnerability, and the Uprisings in Syria and Egypt,” SAIS Review of International Affairs, Volume 35, Number 1, Winter-Spring 2015, pp. 29-46