Climatologists say Syria is a grim preview of what could be in store for the larger Middle East, the Mediterranean, and other parts of the world.
John Wendle, Scientific American, December 2015
In the region of the world where the refugee crisis is at its peak and most prevalent, there’s no need to hammer that environmental migration is a serious issue. But it has some roots in climate change. And the science shows that global warming may make future refugee crises more likely to happen. The key insight from all of this is that climate change made the world’s biggest ever refugee crisis more likely to happen. In the future, climatic stresses will continue to contribute to political unrest and be influential in creating even more refugees.
A photo of a drowned three-year-old Syrian boy washed up on a beach captured the world’s attention. His name was Aylan Kurdi. He drowned, along with his brother and mother, when a boat of migrants capsized en route from Syria to the Greek island of Kos. His father, Abdullah, survived the journey. Twelve refugees, including Aylan, did not.1
The image, which came into prominence in early September 2015, propelled the Middle East’s refugee crisis into the forefront of international debate. Of course, the crisis comprised far more people than the one toddler. More than one million refugees and migrants fled for Europe in 2015—about half of those were Syrian.2 Four million Syrians have fled their homes in the past several years due to climactic disruption and war.3
The refugee crisis extends far beyond Syria. Wars, social conflict, and instability across much of the Arab world have led to 16.7 million refugees being displaced worldwide. In addition to the 16.7 million refugees, 33.3 million from these regions are internally displaced—that is, displaced within their own countries.4 This internal displacement itself has implications for security in those countries. Climate disruption combined with rapid urbanization and population growth in Syria is a toxic mix.
There have been enough discussions and articles on the political conflicts that led to the Syrian refugee crisis to fill several books, so this one will not delve too deeply. Rather, here we will take a broader look at the scope of Syria’s crisis and focus on the connections between the crisis and climate change.
Syria is driving the refugee crisis, and climate change has driven the Syrian refugee crisis; it is the clearest scientifically established link yet between climate change and refugees who are fleeing political unrest. It began, as do many sources of unrest in the Middle East and North Africa, with a case of prolonged, severe drought—a drought that was three times more likely to happen because of global warming. Specifically, “Syria faced a devastating drought between 2006 and 2010, affecting its most fertile lands. The four years of drought turned almost 60 percent of the nation into a desert. It was a huge amount of land that could not support cattle herding and trading.”5
The years-long drought had reverberating impacts for Syria’s agricultural sector, causing widespread crop failures—75 to 100 percent failures in some areas—and killing up to 85 percent of the country’s livestock: “Between 2 and 3 million of Syria’s rural inhabitants were reduced to ‘extreme poverty.’”6 The agricultural difficulties resulted in a mass internal migration. About 1.5 million people moved from rural communities to Syria’s urban centers and its surrounding areas. Those towns, already flooded with Iraqi refugees from another war, were short on food and economic opportunities. The internal migration resulted in population shock, which placed increased pressure on already strained resources. Near-urban settlements grew quickly, increasing by over 50 percent in just eight years from 2002 to 2010. Urban peripheries were filled with “illegal settlements, overcrowding, poor infrastructure, unemployment, and crime. . . . [These problems] were neglected by the Assad government and became the heart of developing unrest.”7 Additionally, “the [Syrian] government began awarding the rights to drill for water on a sectarian basis. So when the rains dried up, desperate people began digging illegal wells, which also became a political act.”8
As for the tipping point of the unrest, many argue that it was the imprisonment of several teenage boys for spray-painting “Down with the regime” on a school wall in Daraa soon after the Arab Spring, where Egypt ousted its dictator.9 Protests erupted around the country, and President Bashar al-Assad brutally cracked down on the protesters, with thousands killed and resulting in civil war.10
The drought itself had a “catalytic effect,” according to a flagship study published in March 2015 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study catalogued the links between global warming, the drought, and Syria’s unrest, definitely concluding that global warming contributed to the region’s instability.11
Syria is not the only country affected by the multiyear drought. According to Columbia University professor Richard Seager, quoted in the Independent, climate change is “steadily making the whole eastern Mediterranean and Middle East region even more arid.” Seager noted that “Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, Iraq and Iran” are drying out as well and that “however the various social, religious and ethnic wars play out, in the coming years and decades the region will feel the stress of declining water resources.”12
As the Syrian civil war progressed, by November 2015 there were over four million Syrian refugees and six and half million IDPs.13 No government or international agency would give Syrians the status of “environmental refugee” or “climate refugee.” They are already “refugees” as the term is currently defined by the Geneva Convention, fleeing from war and conflict. The connection between these refugees and climate change is complex, as discussed above. Certainly the region’s politics had a large hand in the civil unrest; climate change was merely the spark under a preexisting tinderbox of turmoil.
Significantly, this crisis shows what happens when there are far too many refugees than the current system is able to handle. There has been an extraordinary increase in refugees since 2011, and Syria’s crisis is the primary reason for this increase. Each day in 2014 an average of 42,500 people became refugees, asylum seekers, or IDPs. The UN called Syria’s war the “world’s single-largest driver of displacement.”14 The surge in Syrian refugees happened at an unprecedented rate: in 2015 the number of refugees “far surpassed” sixty million in 2015, according to the UNHCR, the highest since 1992.15
According to most news reports, the Arab Spring began in Tunisia when peaceful protests led to the resignation of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and spread to uprisings in Egypt, Libya, and across the Middle East.16 But the momentum from the Middle Eastern democracy movement may have actually had its roots in Asia, with years-long droughts.
A severe, prolonged drought in China and the Arab Spring uprisings that led to the oustings of multiple dictators—these two events seem to be unrelated, but in fact they are inherently connected. During the winters preceding the Arab Spring, China and Russia experienced a once-in-a-century drought. The climate patterns had changed; the wheat supplies in both regions were devastated. This caused global wheat prices to skyrocket, and because Egypt and other countries in that region are highly dependent on wheat imports, they were particularly affected. The drought resulted from lack of rain the preceding fall, along with subsequently less snow and less moisture in the ground. The 2009–2010 drought caused water shortages for over four million people and harmed nearly twenty-five million acres of wheat croplands.17
But this chapter is about the Middle East, not China. China’s drought exemplifies how “a localized hazard [becomes] globalized,” in the words of Oxford University research fellow Troy Sternberg.18 One drought induced by climate change can have ramifications in far places, even on the other side of the world.
Though a Tunisian protester may have kicked off protests in the Arab world, Egypt is the country that set things into motion. In addition, Egypt was most harshly affected by the wheat price spikes caused by the Asian droughts. In Egypt food prices more than doubled from 2010 to 2011.19 The government then cut down on food subsidies to its residents. Food prices were one of the major grievances in the protests. Waving loaves of bread as a symbol of protest, the activists chanted, “Bread, Human Dignity.”20 Egypt, ousting its dictator, triggered conflict in the region. Subsequently, several other Arab countries rose up in an attempt to follow suit.
Libya’s dictator Moammar Gadhafi was ousted during the Arab Spring, but this led to civil war and exacerbated the refugee crisis. Previously, Libya had been seen as a stopgap between refugees in the Middle East and Europe—under horrible circumstances, to be sure: Gadhafi dealt with migrants by throwing them into prison, where rape and torture were prevalent.21 But without Gadhafi, a huge flow of migrants surged into Europe. In the chaotic, unregulated state, previously closed refugee routes were reopened, allowing refugees to travel west apace.
The disruptions in Syria were reflected in other Middle Eastern nations. The Arab world became a cockpit for war and death after the Arab Spring. It is no wonder that so many have tried to flee since that time. And they tried to flee farther than they had ever been: outside the Arab world, into Western Europe. To do so, they had to cross the Mediterranean Sea.
For refugees fleeing their homes, the dangers of crossing the Mediterranean increased. In 2014 the European Union cut down on its boat rescue missions, hoping to discourage refugees from crossing the Mediterranean, despite warnings that reducing the number of rescues would greatly increase the death toll of refugees capsizing in the sea.22 For the refugees, however, there was no other choice. Hundreds of thousands of refugees continued to cross the Mediterranean and still continue to do so. In 2014 more than 219,000 refugees and migrants crossed the Mediterranean Sea, three times the previous high of 70,000, which happened during the Arab Spring. That number continued to increase in 2015: in the first eight months, 300,000 made the trek.23 The smuggling of refugees by boat across the Mediterranean has become a major industry. Indeed, the trade in climate change and war has become quite profitable in certain sectors of the Middle East, with profits projected to be as high as $1 billion for the year 2015.24
In 2013, 700 migrants and refugees attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea into Europe were reported as dead or missing. In 2014 that number rose to 3,166, and in 2015 it was 3,601.25 A huge portion of these migrants—nearly half—came from Syria. In April a ship holding over 800 refugees capsized, killing almost everyone on board. There were just 27 survivors.26 That month, 1,308 refugees and migrants drowned or went missing.27 The shipwrecks spurred the European Union into developing a more effective response to save distressed and sinking vessels.28 The results were “immediate,” according to the UNHCR. While there were over a thousand missing or drowned migrants in April, that number fell to 68 in May and 12 in June. Though as UNHCR notes, “even one death at sea is one death too many.”29 The perils of crossing the Mediterranean continue, with a number of routes.
For those lucky enough to survive the trek, their destination is, first and foremost, a refugee camp. But the ever increasing number of refugees is making it nearly impossible for the camps to house all of those in need, and the camps themselves are overcrowded and unsafe.
The Syrians alone are greatly in need. At the end of 2014 the United Nations said it would need $8.4 billion to help the Syrian people, with a major share of that for neighboring countries to host the refugees.30 Less than half of that amount has been pledged so far by countries around the world.31 Host countries are “at breaking point,” according to UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres. The crisis has spurred international institutions to reconsider how to best aid the refugees, what Guterres calls a new “aid architecture” that “links support to the refugees with what is being done to stabilize the communities who host them.”32
Map 7.1: Mediterranean Crossings. Source: “The Sea Route to Europe: The Mediterranean Passage in the Age of Refugees,” UN High Commissioner for Refugees, July 1, 2015
The UN’s call for aid is to improve services in health, education, water, and sewage, along with policy and administrative support. The need for documentation is a serious issue for Syrian refugees in Turkey, where many of those without proper documentation are sent back to Syria.33 Because of backlogs and lack of resources, refugee camps can keep families stuck there, in limbo, for many years.34 In December 2015, one year after its initial request, the United Nations’ Regional Refugee and Resilience Plan (3RP) was published. In that time the number of registered Syrian refugees increased by over a million, and the plan was only halfway funded. Furthermore, the communities surrounding the refugee camps have experienced economic hardships in the form of wage depression, worsened working conditions, and underemployment, due to an excess of refugees and lack of jobs.35
Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, and Turkey have hosted the largest number of Syrian refugees, if only because they share borders with Syria or are close by. Each of these countries is dealing with specific problems, and refugees are trying to move farther away from the Middle East—farther from instability—into Europe.
Jordan is home to the largest Syrian refugee camp in the world: Zaatari. Located six miles east of Mafraq, Zaatari formed in 2012 and was set up in just nine days.36 In the three years since its inception, Zaatari has grown to host eighty-one thousand refugees. It is the largest refugee camp in the Middle East, and its “population” makes it the ninth largest “city” in Jordan.37 Furthermore, more than half of the Syrians in the camp are children, and many do not receive any education. Without education or training, the young people in the camp never learn sufficient skills to make a living.38 This makes life in the real world much more difficult for them upon release and may encourage people to stay in the camps.
Once out of the camps, life is not always better. Most of the Syrians living in Jordan earn less than ninety-five dollars a month. Finding life in Jordan too difficult, many refugees have turned back to Syria.39 Jordan was home to over 650,000 refugees at the end of 2014, mostly from Syria. But although it is so heavily affected by Syria’s refugee crisis, Jordan is still only the sixth largest refugee-hosting country in the world.40
Figure 7.1: Countries hosting the largest numbers of refugees. Source: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2015/10/global-refugee-crisis-by-the-numbers
Figure 7.2: Source countries for largest numbers of refugees. Source: http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SM.POP.REFG.OR?order=wbapi_data_value_2014+wbapi_data_value+wbapi_data_value-last&sort=asc
The largest Syrian refugee population is in Turkey, which shares the longest border with Syria. The country shelters nearly half of the world’s registered Syrian refugees: nearly 2.3 million at the end of 2015.41 Of those, more than half are younger than seventeen years old, and 14 percent are currently living in refugee camps.42 One million refugees were registered in Turkey over the course of 2014 alone. Most live in cities throughout the country.43 In December 2015 the United States called on Turkey to seal its border, citing fears of the militant Sunni jihadist group ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) transporting fighters and weapons.44 While that may be the case, it will certainly have an impact on the refugees trying to leave as well. Already, over ten thousand Syrians are held up at crossing points on the border with Turkey.45
Lebanon is the host country for the third-largest number of refugees, almost half of whom are Syrian.46 The country was host to 1.17 million refugees at the end of 2014, what the United Nations said stretched “the country’s socio-economic absorption capacity to its limit.”47 Before the outbreak of Syria’s civil war in 2011, it hosted only 8,000 refugees. The number of refugees living in Lebanon increased 14,500 percent in just four years. Turkey, Lebanon, and Pakistan together host 30 percent of all refugees (including non-Syrians).48
Strangely enough, Iraq is also a host to a large number of Syrian refugees. This may come as a surprise because Iraq itself is a major source of refugees. But indeed, it is host to around 250,000 Syrian refugees.
These host countries all share borders with Syria. The difficulties they face have been long known and are often considered apathetically by Western civilization—it is easy enough to consider the Middle East a problematic, unsolvable situation in and of itself, as long as it doesn’t affect the rest of us.
But as the number of refugees has increased, camps are no longer able to hold the numbers, and integration in the new countries is becoming impossible, the refugees are heading for more distant destinations: across the Mediterranean Sea, farther north into Europe, and even across oceans. Through perilous and deadly routes, the refugee crisis finally received the media attention it deserved—but at what cost?
While refugees in the Middle East have become an unfortunately reality of today, it is also exceedingly important to consider how climate change events could influence refugee crises in the future. We begin by considering plainly what rising temperatures will mean for the Middle East: unendurable heat.
As it happens, global warming will not increase temperatures uniformly around the world; some areas will get less hot than others, some will even see decreases in temperatures, at least temporarily. But the Middle East region is going to be disproportionately affected by warming, warming at a rate twice as high as the global average. This will place scarce water resources under increased pressure, which—as seen in Syria—can lead to massive agricultural die-offs. Yet as residents move to the cities, as is common in these situations, the cities themselves will experience more extreme heat waves. Global warming will be concentrated in large cities due to the urban heat island effect.49
Such extreme heat can shut down an entire city, as has already happened in Iraq. In summer 2015 a large part of the Middle East experienced a raging heat wave, with temperatures exceeding 120 degrees Fahrenheit (50–52 centigrade) and high humidity levels creating a heat index reaching 159 degrees Fahrenheit in Iraq and over 160 in nearby Iran.50 The government of Iraq instigated a four-day lifesaving holiday in response.
This is what it looks like for a city to be “unlivable,” a term that scientists started using in 2015 when a study found that parts of the Middle East would become “unlivable” in the near future. Prolonged heat waves will be ten to twenty times more common than before. Dr. Karsten Haustein of the Environmental Change Institute in Oxford told the organization Responding to Climate Change (RTCC): “What used to be a 1 in 50–100 year event is a 1 in 5 year event now.”51
Iraq has been highlighted for its potential for such heat waves to break out in unrest. There are already currently nearly three hundred thousand refugees and one and a half million internally displaced Iraqis.52 Those already displaced have little or no shelter to protect them from the unbearable heat.
The heat wave of 2015 was the subject of protests in Iraq that summer. It was hot enough to melt traffic cones.53 Citizens protested power outages: “All of the people we spoke to here say they want to see an end to rampant corruption, they want the return of basic services, they want electricity, they want to have air conditioning at a time when Iraq is experiencing a blazingly hot record heatwave and they want to have clean water,” reported the Middle East news organization Al Jazeera.54 Thousands of residents took to the streets to protest the power outages and government corruption. One man protesting the power outages was killed. Iraqi prime minister Haider al-Abadi referred to the protests as an “early warning” about “an error that we must solve immediately,” adding, “The people will resort to revolutionary sentiments if this situation continues.”55
Pakistan was also hit exceptionally hard by the heat wave, with over 1,250 deaths, including 1,000 deaths in the southern city of Karachi alone. Heat strokes, dehydration, heart attacks, and other heat-related ailments were rampant. Mortuaries were overfilled. Power outages across the city made things worse.56
It is a sad irony that this region that is one of the biggest sources of global warming—the heart of the oil industry—is one that is becoming too hot to handle. Prolonged, impossible heat waves, where being outside is not an option, are expected to become far more common by 2050. Areas will become virtually uninhabitable, according to a study from MIT scientists Jeremy S. Pal and Elfatih A. B. Eltahir, who found that several cities in the Persian Gulf will experience heat waves so extreme it will be impossible to survive outdoors, forcing residents into air-conditioned buildings for safety.57 Yet this creates a new source of unrest if the government should shut off electricity, as they’ve done in Iraq, for hours or days at a time.58
In a world that is two degrees centigrade above preindustrial levels (the level of global warming to which the United Nations is striving to limit), major cities in the Middle East will experience many more “exceptionally hot” days such as those experienced in the summer 2015 heat wave: up to 62 days in Amman, Jordan; up to 90 days in Baghdad, Iraq; and up to 132 days in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, among others. If the world fails to limit global warming to two degrees centigrade, the number of unbearably hot days in those cities will be much higher: over 115 days per year in all these cities.59
As we have seen in Iraq and Pakistan, many of the places most likely to experience extreme heat also experience frequent power outages, so there is nowhere to escape to for relief. Middle Easterners will either need to eventually move away from the hardships of the city or face the perils of living in an overcrowded, overheated land.
In a land of sand and desert, it comes as no surprise that drought and water scarcity are frequent hazards in the Middle East. Yet it is too easy to dismiss these concerns as something the region has always experienced. The fact is that droughts are going to get worse and severe droughts more frequent. There will be less rain falling in the summer months, and increased temperatures will evaporate moisture from the soil—what little moisture is left.60 Irrigation systems will falter and the agricultural economy will collapse. The constant hardship of water scarcity will be exacerbated to a tipping point.
The telltale signs of climate change can be found in Syria’s multiyear drought that led to civil uprising, but drought is by no means limited to Syria. Over the past four decades, about thirty-eight million people in the Middle East have been affected by drought.61 In coming decades, Middle Eastern countries will be among the most water stressed in the world. The World Resources Institute has ranked the countries that will be most water stressed in 2040, projecting that fourteen of the thirty-three countries that will face “severe water stress” are Middle Eastern, with Bahrain, Kuwait, and Qatar projected to fare the worst. The reason for many of these countries: climate change. More extreme precipitation (droughts punctuated by flash floods) will deplete surface water sources. The US National Intelligence Council acknowledged that as droughts become more frequent, water stresses in the Middle East “will increase the risk of instability and state failure” and “exacerbate regional tensions.”62
The droughts have long-standing economic impacts. In Syria, after the third consecutive year of drought, in 2010, nearly one million people lost their entire livelihoods.63 Countries are already starting to import water or, rather, importing “virtual water” by importing the water-intensive crops that they can no longer grow. The capital city of Yemen, for one, is on track to be the first without access to a viable supply of water. While many oil-rich countries in the Middle East have the economic leverage to import water, balanced by exporting oil, poorer countries like Yemen do not have this option. Currently, every Yemeni has access to just 140 cubic meters of water per year.64 Their reserves of freshwater are drying up, depleting faster than they are being replenished. Its groundwater levels, which come from the mountain regions in the countryside, have plummeted by six meters a year. “Ten future generations’ worth of Yemen’s water is being used up now,” according to the World Bank.65 As water resources continue to decline, who knows what they will do? Importing “virtual water” is not a solution for the farmers, whose livelihoods depend on a steady source of water. More farmers are demanding basic rights to water, inspired in part by the Arab Spring.66
We will increasingly see water resources used as a weapon of war. ISIS, for one, has taken over dams with that very intent. By restricting water to nearby villages, ISIS increases its power.67 Control over scarce water resources is a huge asset for those like ISIS to use in opposing the government and exacerbating tensions. ISIS has taken over multiple dams along the Euphrates River as a strategic move, providing electricity to communities that previously saw only an hour a day in order to gain more support. Water supplies that were previously allocated to nearby communities were dammed up under ISIS’s control.68
The World Bank has noted that droughts, which advance slowly and are not as noticeable as floods or earthquakes, nonetheless contribute to a “disaster situation” when “combined with pre-existing conflict.” Water scarcity in the Middle East is a case in point; it is “increasingly becoming a cause of conflict, leading communities to fight over water-irrigated pastures and forcing people to leave their homes looking for safe access to water.”69
Climate change and water scarcity are interrelated concerns. IPCC Chair Rajendra Pachauri has said that “Unfortunately, the world has not really woken up to the reality of what we are going to face in terms of the crises as far as water is concerned . . . there are going to be profound changes in the water cycle due to climate change.”70 When it comes to water and the satisfaction of the planet’s monumental thirst, calamities seem to be coming to our water resources that border on the biblical. We seem ill prepared for disasters whether they are hurricanes, drought, or the poisoning of our aquifers—or a catastrophic rise in sea levels, for that matter. We bemoan the disasters that befall our society as acts of nature, but we do not seem inclined to engage in long-term planning to prepare for them. We can’t seem to get upset about a collapse or catastrophe that seems so abstract, as it may be years down the road. But sometimes we receive a grim reminder when a tsunami displaces thousands of people or when the water begins to disappear in Middle Eastern countries.
Some 783 million people lacked access to clean drinking water as of 2013.71 Two billion die each year from unhealthy water conditions. According to United Nations reports, two-thirds of the global population will suffer intermittent water shortages by 2025. Oil may have been the defining resource of the twentieth century, but we are in a new century now, which many consider to be the century of water. Suffice it to say that water scarcity is an issue that is driving societies toward a tipping point in history. That point is one of growing conflict and instability in the future among water-resource-deprived nations.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies argues that “On one hand, global water challenges are the result of too many people demanding too much water.”72 On the other hand, these challenges are brought about when changes in climate combine with dysfunctional infrastructures and poor government frameworks that are unable to manage water supplies for countries and their populations. Sometimes historically settled populations can be turned into refugees because of bad decisions that lead to conflict.
Today Jordan, one of the world’s driest countries, is dumping much of its water into the sand. Aging infrastructure is to blame. As an Atlantic Council report put it, “Of all the water that Jordan pumps, billions of liters never reach a family’s tap. Instead it gushes out of broken pipes. The amount of water lost nationwide could satisfy the needs of 2.6 million people: more than one-third of Jordan’s current population.”73 Meanwhile, as refugees from the neighboring Syrian civil war stream into Jordan’s urban areas, they further strain a water system that may collapse of age and ill repair. Jordan’s case is classic insofar as it demonstrates how bad decisions about infrastructure can have a ruinous impact on national populations. Furthermore, a warmer world is ripe for conflict and danger.
Most of the Middle East is in water crisis mode, and the region is approaching dangerous water shortages and contamination. As Joyce Starr has observed, as early as the 1980s the US government intelligence services estimated that there were at least ten places in the world where war could break out over dwindling shared water—Jordan, Israel, Cyprus, Malta, and the six countries of the Arabian Peninsula.74 What are the implications for water and societies in terms of climate change? Already social scientists at the International Peace Institute have observed that climate change–induced migration appears in many climate-change-to-violence scenarios.
Today environmental problems play a role in migration. Some migrations occur when there is either too much water, as in rising seas, tsunamis, and floods, or not enough water. In these countries people depend on the environment for their livelihood. For example, land degradation and scarcity have been growing in Bangladesh. Frequent storms and floods are destroying the Bangladeshian landscape. Largely due to this, twelve to seventeen million Bangladeshis moved to India and a half million moved internally in the 1990s.75 A similar tragedy occurred in the United States in the 1930s when aggressive agriculture and prolonged drought turned the western plains into the infamous Dust Bowl that forced two and a half million people to leave the region.
“Water conflict,” strictly defined, is a term used for describing a conflict between countries, states, or groups over access to water resources. Water wars or conflicts have been a recurring theme over five thousand years, according to a historical study by the Pacific Institute.76 These conflicts occur over both freshwater and saltwater, both between and within nations. Freshwater, however, is vital for community survival. Its availability is certainly a matter of life or death. Recent humanitarian catastrophes such as the Rwandan genocide or the war in Sudanese Darfur have been linked to water conflicts of long standing. Current disputes in the Middle East have been water-based and have been the catalyst for an outflowing of climate refugees. These disputes include conflict stemming from the Tigris and Euphrates rivers among Turkey, Syria, and Iraq; the Jordan River conflict among Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, and Palestine; and Nile River conflicts between Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia. As Shane Harris wrote in Foreign Policy, the strains of growing populations, coupled with the effects of pollution and climate change, have taxed many of the water systems that feed the world’s people and are vital for agriculture. More than half the world’s wetlands have disappeared, and climate change around the world has altered weather patterns and led to water shortages.77 Such developments may unleash conflict and major out-migrations in developed countries as well.
In both Africa and the Middle East, future wars are more likely to be fought over water than over oil. Water hegemony and climate refugees are two sides of the same coin of climate change. Those who dominate the hydropolitics of their state or region ultimately decide the fate of the great mass of people who are dependent on this vital resource. Syria is an excellent example of how hydropolitics mixed with severe drought can produce one of the largest tsunamis of climate and political refugees in this century.
As we observed in chapter 1, drought and floods are not mutually exclusive. In fact, the two work together to degrade agricultural land and create food and resource scarcity. Worldwide, floods are the most frequent disasters recorded, and this is also the case in the Middle East.78 While other climate events are slow-going crises, floods have a heavier hand in immediately forcing displacement. In nearly every country in the Middle East, floods are the most frequent natural disaster (with the exception of Iran, where earthquakes overtake them).79
In 2014 severe floods in the Balkan region were the single most responsible event for disaster-induced displacement in Europe.80 In May 2014 heavy rains in Bosnia and Herzegovina flooded the rivers and destroyed water banks, resulting in severe floods and landslides. Forty-five thousand homes were destroyed and ninety thousand people were displaced. As a result, over forty thousand people sought refuge. In a region where most people already struggle to find decent housing, the flooding and landslides wrought devastation.81
Yemen has also experienced strong floods, year after year, forcing tens of thousands of Yemenis to leave their homes.82 Yemenis in refugee camps themselves are vulnerable to flooding. In a case in 2013, torrential floods wiped out half of the tents at three refugee camps. Eight thousand camp residents were affected.83
The UNHCR said it would do its part to “continue its efforts to help those Yemenis affected by this natural disaster.”84 But it is not in their legal mandate to do so, so the displaced people are largely dependent on the mobilization from other UN agencies and the kindness of donors and other forms of foreign aid.
As with heat waves, floods have seemed to disproportionately target Pakistan in recent years.85 In 2010 heavy monsoon rains flooded the Indus River basin. About one-fifth of the country was underwater, and two thousand died. More than ten million people were displaced and relocated in drastically underfunded refugee camps. Much of the agricultural economy was wiped out, meaning the refugees had no livelihood once the floodwaters subsided and they could move back to their homes.86 An estimated $43 billion was wiped out of the economy.87
Life for the displaced was hard. Pakistanis were forced to live in camps with scarce clean water. The dramatic loss of livestock killed in the floods resulted in severe food shortages. With inadequate water sanitation, there were concerns of typhoid, hepatitis, and cholera outbreaks.88 The camp residents were at risk of “a second wave of deaths induced by the floods in the shape of water-borne diseases,” according to Jacques de Maio, head of operations for South Asia at the International Committee of the Red Cross.89
But 2010 was not the end of Pakistan’s flood hardships. A year later, in 2011, flooding destroyed 1.7 million homes and displaced 18 million people.90 In 2014 monsoon rains and floods killed 367 and affected over 2 million people.91 In 2015 more than 1 million people were evacuated at risk of floods, and 835 new relief camps were established to accommodate them.92
Pakistani scientists argue there was “strong evidence” that climate change was responsible for the devastating 2010 floods.93 Indeed, the United Nations’ science assessment has found that the severity of monsoon rains is proportional to increased atmospheric temperatures. Worsened monsoon rains are in line with a warming world and expected to get worse as global temperatures continue to increase.94 The 2010 floods—the worst of them yet—ravaged southern Pakistan, but northern Pakistan is also expected to get more floods and landslides in the future.95
Still, Pakistan stands out from many of the other countries that experience such frequent devastating floods as a model of resilience. In Punjab, a region in eastern Pakistan that stretches into India, the Pakistani government has been building model villages to replace the ones that were washed away, and these replacements will be far more resilient to floods and climate change. Mud huts washed away by the monsoon rains are replaced with resilient brick homes, built to withstand both earthquakes and floods. New schools and health infrastructure replace what was lost. Solar and biogas plants are replacing old, emissions-intensive fossil fuel plants. These actions, along with promoting economic development in the region, constitute a “triple win” for adaptation: low emissions, disaster-resilient, economy-boosting communities.96
This model may become a necessity for other Middle Eastern communities. Even without climate change, the sheer pace of urbanization means every time a disaster strikes there is more damage, more lives lost. Flood mortality, while on a global decline, has continued to increase in the Middle East partially because of urbanization (and also because of climate change), and the percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) endangered by floods has tripled over the past four decades.97
It is worth noting that building climate-resilient communities, like in Pakistan’s Punjab, is far from inexpensive. Each community costs about US$20 million.98 But the dollar amount of economic assets lost in the floods far outpaces that figure; in 2008, floods in Yemen districts Hadramout and Al-Mahara cost US$1.6 billion.99
Another key piece of the flood problem is urbanization. About 60 million people live in coastal regions in the Middle East—about 17 percent of its population. It is one of the world’s most rapidly expanding populations. By 2030, the Middle East’s urban population will increase by 45 percent, with more than 106 million additional people.100 As urban development continues in those areas, so too will the risks of surging tides. Furthermore, expanding urban settlements tend to lack proper infrastructure to respond to floods. Housing infrastructure to receive the new migrants is constructed quickly and poorly. Adequate drainage systems, catchment systems, warning systems, and emergency plans are scarcely found in many Middle Eastern urban settlements.101
As climate change worsens conditions in the rural areas and people continue to migrate from the countryside to the cities, urban infrastructure that is resilient to sea level rise and floods will become an increasingly important requirement.
Cyclones making landfall off the Arabian Sea used to be uncommon, but now some fear this may become the new norm. The environment of the Arabian Sea has everything against allowing cyclones to form. Cyclones and hurricanes require wide-open spaces to form and warm waters to gather strength, and while the Arabian Sea is warm, it is too small for cyclones to develop. Instead, cyclones spin out of the Indian Ocean and steer through the cramped Arabian Peninsula.
In fall 2015 two cyclones formed in the Arabian Sea and made landfall in Yemen in one single week.102 The first, Cyclone Chapala, which was the worst, struck Yemen with devastating consequences. The region where the cyclone hit was home to one hundred thousand IDPs and twenty-seven thousand refugees, and they bore brunt of the cyclone.103 While the death toll is unknown (Mukala, the region hardest hit, had been governed only by tribal councils and al-Qaeda for months), dozens of people were left missing and six thousand fled for higher ground.104
Yemen barely had time to reel in shock before a second cyclone made landfall, Cyclone Megh. It was less powerful than Cyclone Chapala but no less deadly, killing six on Yemen’s island of Socotra. On the mainland, where it lessened to a tropical depression, Megh flooded a hospital holding those displaced from Chapala and ruined the houses of three thousand others.105 Mercy Corps, an Oregon-based humanitarian organization, estimated that up to forty thousand Yemenis were displaced from the intense floods following the storm.106
Before that fateful week, there had not been a single year with two cyclones making landfall in Yemen. By all accounts the cyclone was unusual. Only one or two cyclones form in the Arabian Sea each year, and they rarely gain enough strength to be classified as severe. But Cyclone Chapala formed over record-warm sea temperatures. It was the second strongest and the longest-lived cyclone in the Arabian Sea on record; those two factors added together meant the cyclone generated the most energy of any on record in the area.107
Many scientists do not expect cyclones to become more frequent with global warming, but they will become more intense. So while only one or two cyclones may continue to form each year on average over the Arabian Peninsula, the likelihood of their being strong enough to make land and wreak damage is substantially higher.108
Afghanistan is the second largest source of refugees, after Syria. In 2013, before Syria’s uprising, it was ranked number one. In fact, for the past several decades, Afghanistan has been ranked the number-one refugee source country between 1981 and 2013; it is only recently, with Syria’s uprising, that it was demoted to number two.109 So while its crisis is nothing new, its refugees face unique vulnerabilities to climate change.
Afghanistan’s refugee crisis has escalated in recent years. The refugee crises are often interconnected; Syria’s refugee crisis has impacts in Afghanistan and other nearby countries. Most Afghan refugees have ended up in neighboring Pakistan. It has often been the world’s largest refugee-hosting country, falling to second place behind Turkey for the first time in 2014, when it hosted one and a half million refugees, the majority of whom were Afghan.110 But relations between the two countries are fragile. Many Afghani officials and residents blame Pakistan for attacks carried out by the Taliban in Kabul in August 2014.111 Nevertheless, the Afghani and Pakistani governments are trying to work together to discern how to handle what is the largest protracted refugee population in a single country, working to extend Proof of Registration cards for Afghan refugees in the country.
Figure 7.3: Drivers of displacement in Herat and Helmad (Pakistan). Source: IOW/Samuel Hall Consulting, 2014. Data: IOM DTM, December 2013.
Afghanistan is ranked 169th of 180 countries on the Notre Dame Global Adaptation Index, which ranks countries according to their risk given climate change112—to heat waves, drought, and floods—as well as least capable of coping with its impacts.113 Decades of armed conflict and .environmental degradation have weakened the country’s ability to invest in disaster risk management and climate adaptation.114 And while the military presence and political conflict is cited as the primary driver of displacement in Afghanistan, the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre notes that climate drivers are making it worse.
Natural hazards aggravate local tensions surrounding scarce resources and land disputes (see fig. 7.3).115 Yet despite the overlap between natural disasters and conflict as drivers of displacement, the two phenomena are tracked and assisted separately, by different organizations and with different forms of response. The two organizations—UNHCR and the Afghanistan National Disaster Management Authority—will need to work together to form a comprehensive response and better their assistance to those in need.
As it happens currently, those who cite political conflict as the reason for their displacement receive better long-term assistance. As a result, displaced people are more likely to cite political insecurity as the reason for their migration rather than natural disasters or climate change.116 However, Afghanistan’s national policy on IDPs, adopted in November 2013, applies to people forced to flee from political conflict and those displaced by natural disasters. It remains to be seen how this policy plays out in practice.117
As a region that is not only the largest current source of refugees but also has historically dealt with a harsh climate and environment, the Middle East exemplifies the worst-case scenarios interacting. Its experience thus provides important lessons that can be adopted there and elsewhere. First and foremost, this region will need to adapt to a world with less water. Water scarcity is already a driver of conflict, and as water sources continue to deplete, there will be even more competition over what’s left. If not, water will become the region’s main geopolitical resource, and “water wars” may become the main source of strife.
Desalination, a process that removes the salt and impurities from water taken from salty oceans and seas, is seen by many as a last resort to address water shortages, but for some Arabian countries it is a major source of potable water. Currently, more than 70 percent of the world’s desalination plants take water from the Arabian Gulf and Mediterranean Sea to serve the region.118 But after the process, the salt brine is returned to the seas and can harm the region’s environment. Some regions of the gulf have salt levels eight times higher than they should be, affecting the region’s fishing industry. As time goes on and salty waste keeps getting dumped back into increasingly saline seas, the desalination process will become increasingly inefficient and in turn will harm the region’s ecology and wildlife.
Until it becomes unviable, however, the desalination industry is booming, particularly in oil-rich countries, which makes sense given that it is such an energy-intensive process.119 Yet the availability of this process is often an excuse for waste. The reliance on such a fossil fuel–intensive means to deliver clean water will become increasingly out of step as these countries work to reduce greenhouse gas emissions—as they should, to prevent even further future cases of drought and water depletion. Some countries are experimenting with powering desalination plants with solar power instead.120
Even so, the process remains expensive and difficult for poor countries like Yemen. It should only be seen as a last resort and not as an excuse to waste water, as has been done in the past. Golf courses and parks are watered with valuable drinking water.121 The tourism industry has also resulted in water waste, with demand for longer and more frequent baths and showers, swimming pools, and green lawns.
Drastic changes to agriculture are needed. For too long the region has grown crops that are not suitable for the region: cotton, rice, wheat. A shift to crops that use less water will be necessary. Purchasing “virtual water” via crops is another option, as discussed above. But the idea of completely replacing an entire industry with imports is simply not economically feasible.
Saving water through wastewater recycling will be key, especially in urban settings. Recycled water—the water that is flushed, showered, or rinsed down the drain—can be used to irrigate farms, to water landscapes, and to fill toilets. Fortunately, wastewater recycling technology is making rapid advancements.122 Yet it has its risks, especially as wastewater is used in agricultural settings; it could increase exposure to chemicals and diseases for both farmers and communities. This will be an issue to monitor as recycling technology is employed more thoroughly. It is currently done with little government monitoring; this will need to change.123
Already some smaller cities have completely run out of water, the Guardian‘s environment editor, John Vidal, reported in 2015. Many others have water supplies restricted to just a few hours a day. Water aquifers are the major source of water in many parts of the region, and they are being depleted at alarming rates, an irreversible process.124 Cut-off water supplies may become the norm if nothing is done.
Policies that have worked out well could become a model for other regions. Jordan, for instance, is aiming to “maximize the use of available water through water conservation . . . and substitution of freshwater with reclaimed water for agriculture,” according to Jordanian officials.125 Morocco is working with the World Bank to “make irrigation in the basin more sustainable, more profitable, and more resilient to climate change” by providing a fixed amount of water and subsidizing efficient irrigation equipment.126
Some cities are coming around to the fact that drastic water-saving measures are needed. A couple of cities in the United Arab Emirates are on the forefront of such efforts. Abu Dhabi is currently building a futuristic city called Masdar, which will be run on renewable energy and employ extreme water-saving measures: concrete instead of grass shoulders on the road, and water-saving devices in all buildings. Schools and mosques within Abu Dhabi itself are also working to save water, notes Vidal, by building two thousand mosques in Abu Dhabi fitted with devices that save the water people wash in before prayer and initiating school competitions to reduce water usage.127
The European Union assembled a set of policy orientations in 2007, including recommendations to put the right price tag on water, allocate water-related funding more efficiently, and finance water efficiency and land-use planning, and improve drought risk management and monitoring systems.128 There needs to be a shift in water-saving culture as well. In addition, the depleted aquifers need to be restored, be it through rainwater collection or treated wastewater.
One thing is certain: though regional and local solutions will be needed, international collaboration will also be necessary to prevent a catastrophic worldwide water crisis. Many water sources cross international lines, like the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and the seas. Water in the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, which are points of contention and control, is depleting faster than nearly every place on earth, except in northern India.129 Professor Ralf Ludwig, who coordinated the EU-funded CLIMB (“Climate Induced Changes on the Hydrology of Mediterranean Basins”) project, has said: “International collaboration is often a stronger, and obviously a preferable mechanism to sustainably manage scarce water resources than conflict. When you start to collaborate you may be able to find enduring solutions for the benefit of all those involved. In any case, adaptive and preferably collaborative action is needed to reduce the likelihood of conflict and increase water security.”130
Talib al-Shehhi, director of preaching at the United Arab Emirates,’ ministry of Islamic affairs has said, “Allah does not like those who waste. . . . Safeguarding resources and water especially is central to religion. The Qu’ran says water is a pillar of life and consequently orders us to save [it], and Muhammad instructs us to do so.” Regardless of belief, opposing parties will have no choice but to cooperate or face ruinous conflict. In fact, some experts point to the water crisis as an opportunity for a new form of peace.131
In addition to water control, adaptation to other impacts of climate change will be necessary. As people flock to the coastal cities—Kuwait City, Doha, Abu Dhabi, and Dubai—barricades to prevent flooding from sea level rise will be necessary. The official systems for responding to natural disasters and to refugees will need to work increasingly together. Helping this region become resilient to the impacts of climate change—without requiring such a heavy use of oil, which exacerbates climate change—will be key for preserving its political security and preventing conflict that leads to further refugee crises.
The Middle East, long roiled in conflict and strife, will be a stage for conflict in the decades to come. With much of the region’s economy dependent on oil, it will have to become a major player in the global effort to reduce fossil fuels and combat climate change. The world is left with two options. We can let things lie, allowing political conflict to increase and oil-addicted governments to do nothing to help the Middle Eastern refugees, continuing to spiral the refugee crisis to new heights. Or we can work with the region to fight climate change and to protect people from its catastrophic harms.
John Wendle, “The Ominous Story of Stria’s Climate Refugees,” Scentific American, December 17, 2015, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ominous-story-of-syria-climate-refugees/.
1. John Withnall, “Aylan Kurdi’s Story: How a Small Strian Child Came to Be Washed up on a Beach in Turkey,” The Independent, September 3, 2015, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/aylan-kurdi-s-story-how-a-small-syrian-child-came-to-be-washed-up-on-a-beach-in-turkey-10484588.html.
2. Jonathan Clayton and Hereward Holland, “Over One Million Sea Arrivals Reach Europe in 2015,” UNHCR, December 30, 2015, http://www.unhcr.org/en-us/news/latest/2015/12/5683d0b56/million-sea-arrivals-reach-europe-2015.html.
3. Mosin Ali and Yarno Ritzen, “Syrian Refugee Crisis in Numbers,” Al Jazeera America, December 9, 2015, http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/interactive/2015/12/151209100759278.html.
4. Patrick Kingsley, “Arab Spring Prompts Biggest Migrant Wave Since Second World War,” Guardian, January 3, 2015. http://www.theguardian.com/world/commentisfree/2015/jan/03/arab-spring-migrant-wave-instability-war.
5. “How Could A Drought Spark A Civil War?,” September 8, 2013, NPR, http://www.npr.org/2013/09/08/220438728/how-could-a-drought-spark-a-civil-war.
6. William R. Polk, “Your Labor Day Syria Reader, Part 2,” Atlantic, September 2, 2013, http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/09/your-labor-day-syria-reader-part-2-william-polk/279255/.
7. Data and quotes from Colin P. Kelley et al., “Climate Change in the Fertile Crescent and Implications of the Recent Syrian Drought,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112, no. 11 (2015), http://www.pnas.org/content/112/11/3241.full.pdf.
8. “Water Security,” Sustainability.org, September 12, 2013, http://www.sustainability.org.il/home/news-updates/Water-Security-Drought-Called-a-Factor-in-Syrias-Uprising-0913.
9. Clarissa Ward, “How Teens Started Syria’s Uprising 1 Year Ago,” CBS News, March 16, 2012, http://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-teens-started-syrias-uprising-1-year-ago/
10. Audrey Kurth Cronin, “ISIS Is Not a Terrorist Group,” Foreign Affairs (March/April 2015), https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/middle-east/isis-not-terrorist-group.
11. Kelley et al., “Climate Change in the Fertile Crescent.”
12. Tom Bawden, “Refugee Crisis: Is Climate Change Affecting Mass Migration?,” Independent, September 7, 2015, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/refugee-crisis-is-climate-change-affecting-mass-migration-10490434.html.
13. “Syrian Arab Republic: Humanitarian Snapshot,” Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, November 30, 2015, http://reliefweb.int/report/syrian-arab-republic/syrian-arab-republic-humanitarian-snapshot-30-november-2015-enar.
14. “A World at War: Worldwide Displacement Hits All-Time High as War and Persecution Increase,” UNHCR, June 18, 2015, http://www.unhcr.org/en-us/news/latest/2015/6/558193896/worldwide-displacement-hits-all-time-high-war-persecution-increase.html.
15. “World at War: UNHCR Global Trends, Forced Displacement 2014,” UNHCR, June 18, 2015, http://www.unhcr.org/en-us/statistics/country/556725e69/unhcr-global-trends-2014.html; Stephanie Nebehay, “World’s Refugees and Displaced Exceed Record 60 Million: U.N.,” Reuters, December 18, 2015.
16. Boris Kelly, “Egypt Rises,” Overland, February 14, 2011, https://overland.org.au/2011/02/egypt-rises/.
17. Austin Ramzy, “China Suffering Worst Drought since 1951,” Time, February 6, 2009, http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1877552,00.html.
18. “The Arab Spring and Climate Change: A Climate and Security Correlations Series,” Center for American Progress, ed. Caitlin E. Werrell and Francesco Femia, February 2013.
19. Fatima Bishtawi, “What Ignited the Arab Spring?” Yale News, August 5, 2015, http://archive.epi.yale.edu/the-metric/what-ignited-arab-spring.
20. Ibid.
21. Matthew Carr, “How Libya Kept Migrants out of EU—At Any Cost,” The Week, August 5, 2011.
22. Lizzie Davies, Arthur Nelson, “Italy: End of Ongoing Sea Rescue Mission ‘puts thousands at risk,’” Guardian, October 31, 2014.
23. Melissa Fleming, “Crossings of Mediterranean Sea Exceed 300,000, Including 200,000 to Greece,” UNHCR, August 28, 2015.
24. Tom Miles, “Europe Gets One Million Migrants in 2015, Smugglers Seen Making $1 Billion,” Reuters, December 22, 2015.
25. “Mediterranean Sea Data of Missing Migrants,” International Organization for Migration, http://missingmigrants.iom.int/mediterranean.
26. Alessandra Bonomolo, “UN Says 800 Migrants Dead in Boat Disaster as Italy Launches Rescue of Two More Vessels,” Guardian, April 20, 2015.
27. UNHCR, “Mediterranean Crisis 2015 at six months: refugee and migrant numbers highest on record,” July 1, 2015, http://www.unhcr.org/uk/news/press/2015/7/5592b9b36/mediterranean-crisis-2015-six-months-refugee-migrant-numbers-highest-record.html.
28. “The Sea Route to Europe: The Mediterranean Passage in the Age of Refugees,” UNHCR, July 1, 2015.
29. Ibid.
30. “UN and Partners Seek US$8.4 Billion for New Syria Programme in 2015,” UNHCR, December 18, 2014.
31. “Donors Pledge $3.8 Billion in Aid to People Affected by Syria Crisis at UN-Backed Conference,” UN News Centre, March 31, 2015.
32. “UN and Partners Seek US$8.4 Billion.”
33. Tania Karas, “Not Syrian, Not Turkish: Refugees Fleeing War Lack Documentation,” Al Jazeera America, September 24, 2015.
34. Max Fischer and Amanda Taub, “The Refugee Crisis: 9 Questions You Were Too Embarrassed to Ask,” Vox, September 9, 2015.
35. “3RP Regional Refugee & Resilience Plan, 2016–2017, Regional Strategic Overview,” http://www.3rpsyriacrisis.org.
36. Christopher Jones-Cruise, “Refugee Camp in Jordan Is Biggest in Middle East,” VOA News, August 9, 2015.
37. “Inside the Largest Syrian Refugee Camp—Zaatari Camp Three Years On,” Telegraph, August 7, 2015. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/jordan/11782854/Inside-the-largest-Syrian-refugee-camp-Zaatari-camp-three-years-on.html.
38. Jones-Cruise, “Refugee Camp in Jordan.”
39. Ibid.
40. “World at War: UNHCR Global Trends, Forced Displacement 2014,” UNHCR, June 2015, http://www.unhcr.org/en-us/statistics/country/556725e69/unhcr-global-trends-2014.html.
41. Michael Martinez, “Syrian Refugees: Which Countries Welcome Them, Which Ones Don’t,” CNN.com, September 10, 2015; “Syria: Conflict without Borders: Number and Locations of Refugees and IDPs,” UNHCR, https://hiu.state.gov/Products/Syria_ConflictWithoutBorders_Displacement_2015Aug27_HIU_U1283.pdf.
42. “Syria: Conflict without Borders.”
43. “World at War: UNHCR Global Trends.”
44. Geoff Dyer, “US Urges Turkey to Seal Border with Syria,” Financial Times, December 1, 2015, https://www.ft.com/content/94001904–9851–11e5–9228–87e603d47bdc.
45. “Not-So-Open Borders for Syrian Refugees?” IRIN News, December 24, 2012.
46. “World at War: UNHCR Global Trends.”
47. “UNHCR Launches ‘Voices for Refugees’ Aimed at Mobilising Support for Displaced Civilians and Refugees,” Ammon, June 29, 2015, http://en.ammonnews.net/article.aspx?articleno=29346#.WImCjLYrKRs.
48. Ibid.
49. “Hot and Getting Hotter: Heat Islands Cooking U.S. Cities,” Climate Central, August 20, 2014, http://www.climatecentral.org/news/urban-heat-islands-threaten-us-health-17919.
50. Nick Wiltgen, “Feels-Like Temp Reaches 164 Degrees in Iran, 159 in Iraq; Days Off Ordered as Mideast Broils in Extreme Heat Wave,” Weather.com, August 5, 2015.
51. Freya Palmer, “Extreme Weather Events of 2015: Is Climate Change to Blame?” Climate Home, August 21, 2015, http://www.climatechangenews.com/2015/08/21/extreme-weather-events-of-2015-is-climate-change-to-blame/.
52. “2015 UNHCR Country Operations Profile—Iraq,” UNHCR, http://www.unhcr.org/pages/49e486426.html.
53. Kareem Shaheen and Saeed Kamali Dehghan, “Middle East Swelters in Heat-wave as Temperatures Top 50C,” Guardian, August 4, 2015.
54. “Iraq Cabinet Backs PM Abbadi’s Sweeping Reforms,” Al Jazeera, August 9, 2015.
55. Anne Barnard, “120 Degrees and No Relief? ISIS Takes Back Seat for Iraqis,” New York Times, August 1, 2015, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/world/middleeast/iraqis-protest-electricity-shortage-during-heat-wave.html?_r=0.
56. “Pakistan Heatwave Death Toll Climbs Past 1,200,” Al Jazeera, June 27, 2015; Saba Imtiaz and Zia ur-Rehmanjune, “Death Toll from Heat Wave in Karachi, Pakistan, Hits 1,000” New York Times, June 25, 2015.
57. Jeremy S. Pal and Elfatih A. B. Eltahir, “Future Temperature in Southwest Asia Projected to Exceed a Threshold for Human Adaptability,” http://eltahir.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Paper.pdf.
58. “Iraqis Protest over Baghdad Heatwave Power Cuts,” BBC News, August 1, 2015.
59. Maria Sarraf, “Two Scenarios for a Hotter and Drier Arab World—and What We Can Do about It,” World Bank, November 24, 2014, http://blogs.worldbank.org/arabvoices/two-scenarios-hotter-and-drier-arab-world-and-what-we-can-do-about-it.
60. Climate Change 2007: Working Group II: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability; Floods, and Droughts, IPCC Fourth Assessment Report: Climate Change 2007.
61. World Bank, “Natural Disasters in the Middle East and North Africa: A Regional Overview,” January 2014, http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/211811468106752534/pdf/816580WP0REPLA0140same0box00PUBLIC0.pdf.
62. “Intelligence Community Assessment on Global Water Security,” US National Intelligence Council, http://www.state.gov/e/oes/water/ica.
63. World Bank, “Natural Disasters in the Middle East and North Africa.”
64. John James, “Export Oil, Import Water: The Middle East’s Risky Economics,” IRIN News, March 5, 2013.
65. Foad Al Hazari, “Future Impact of Climate Change Visible Now in Yemen,” World Bank, November 24, 2014.
66. James, “Export Oil, Import Water.”
67. Walaa Hussein, “How IS Uses Water as Weapon of War,” AL Monitor, http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/05/arab-world-water-conflict-isis-control-war.html.
68. Danya Chudakoff, “‘Water War’ Threatens Syria Lifeline,” Al Jazeera, July 7, 2014.
69. World Bank, “Natural Disasters in the Middle East and North Africa.”
70. Nita Bhalla, “World Has Not Woken Up to Water Crisis Caused by Climate Change,” Scientific American, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/world-has-not-woken-up-to-water-crisis-caused-by-climate-change/.
71. “World Water Day 2013—Year of International Cooperation,” UN Water, http://www.unwater.org/water-cooperation-2013/water-cooperation/facts-and-figures/en/.
72. Erik R. Peterson, “Addressing Our Global Water Future,” Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Sandia National Laboratories, September 30, 2005, p. 21, https://csis-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/legacy_files/files/media/csis/pubs/csis-snl_ogwf_sept_28_2005.pdf.
73. Keith Proctor, Refugee Crisis Draining Jordan’s Water Resources,” Atlantic Council, March 21, 2014, http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/menasource/refugee-crisis-draining-jordan-s-water-resources.
74. Joyce Starr, “Water Wars” Foreign Policy 82 (Spring), 17–36, available at http://dlc.dlib.indiana.edu/dlc/bitstream/handle/10535/3267/Reproduced.pdf?sequence=1.
75. Rafael Reuveny, “Climate change-induced migration and violent conflict,” Political Geography 26 (2007) 656–673, available at http://n.ereserve.fiu.edu/010030490–1.pdf
76. Peter H. Gleick and Matthew Heberger, “Water Conflict Chronology,” Pacific Institute, December 10, 2009, available at http://worldwater.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/ww8-red-water-conflict-chronology-2014.pdf.
77. Shane Harris, “Water Wars,” Foreign Policy, September 18, 2014, http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/09/18/water-wars/.
78. World Bank, “Natural Disasters in the Middle East and North Africa.”
79. Ibid.
80. “Global Estimates 2015: People Displaced by Disasters,” Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre and Norwegian Refugee Council, July 2015.
81. Ibid.
82. “Yemen: Over 10,000 Displaced by Floods,” UNHCR, October 27, 2008.
83. “Yemen Flash Floods Destroy Camps for Displaced People,” Guardian, August 29, 2013.
84. “Yemen: Over 10,000 Displaced by Floods.”
85. While Pakistan is technically an Asian country, it aligns more closely with the Middle East both in culture and in climate/environment, so discussion of such is included in this chapter.
86. Asian Development Bank, Addressing Climate Change and Migration in Asia and the Pacific, 1st ed. (Mandaluyong City, Philippines: Asian Development Bank, 2012), p. 5, box 3, available at http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/pais/research/researchcentres/csgr/green/foresight/demography/2012_adb_addressing_climate_change_and_migration_in_asia_pacific.pdf
87. Hasan Mansoor, “Pakistan Evacuates Thousands in Flooded South,” Agence France-Presse, August 22, 2010.
88. Ibid.
89. “UN Chief: Pakistan Needs More Aid,” Al Jazeera, August 15, 2010, http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia/2010/08/201081552627441712.html
90. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, “Pakistan Media Fact-sheet,” 2011, http://bit.ly/151MVsY
91. “Pakistan: Floods—Sep 2014,” Relief Web, http://reliefweb.int/disaster/fl-2014–000122-pak.
92. Ibid.
93. “‘Strong Evidence’ Climate Change Caused Devastating Pakistan Floods,” Scotsman, October 13, 2010, http://www.scotsman.com/news/strong-evidence-climate-change-caused-devastating-pakistan-floods-1–824487.
94. M. L. Parry, O. F. Canziani, J. P. Palutikof, P. J. van der Linden, and C. E. Hanson, eds., Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
95. Asian Development Bank, Addressing Climate Change and Migration (Mandaluyong City, Philippines: Asian Development Bank, 2012).
96. “News: Pakistan’s Punjab Builds Model Villages to Withstand Disasters,” Climate and Development Knowledge Center, December 17, 2013.
97. World Bank, “Natural Disasters in the Middle East.”
98. “News: Pakistan’s Punjab.”
99. UN-HABITAT, “The State of Arab Cities 2012: Challenges of Urban Transition, 2012,” downloadable at http://unhabitat.org/books/the-state-of-arab-cities-2012-challenges-of-urban-transition/.
100. Ibid.
101. “Natural Disasters in the Middle East.”
102. Yamiche Alcindor, “Unprecedented Back-to-Back Cyclones Hit Arabian Sea,” USA Today, November 7, 2015.
103. “Deadly Cyclone Triggers Heavy Flooding in Yemen,” Al Jazeera, November 3, 2015.
104. Angela Fritz, “Historic Cyclone Chapala Ravages Coastal Yemen with Catastrophic Flash Flooding,” Washington Post, November 3, 2015.
105. “Tropical Cyclone Megh—Nov 2015,” Relief Web, http://reliefweb.int/disaster/tc-2015–000152-yem.
106. Kelly Montgomery, “Helping Displaced Families after Cyclone Chapala Flooding,” Mercy Corps, November 5, 2015.
107. Bob Henson, “Chapala Slams Yemen: First Hurricane-Strength Cyclone on Record,” Wunderground, November 3, 2015.
108. James Renwick, “IPCC Special: Future Climate Phenomena and Regional Climate Change,” Climatica, January 7, 2014.
109. “World at War: UNHCR Global Trends.”
110. Ibid.
111. Khalid Aziz, “Pak-Afghan Relations: Hanging by a Thread,” Dawn, September 12, 2015.
112. Lonnie Shekhtman, “How to Help the Countries Most Vulnerable to Climate Change. (Energy/Environment),” Christian Science Monitor, April 5, 2016, http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2016/0405/How-to-help-the-countries-most-vulnerable-to-climate-change.
113. Notre Dame Global Adaptation Index, http://index.gain.org/ranking.
114. “Global Estimates 2015: People Displaced by Disasters.”
115. Ibid.
116. Ibid.
117. Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation, “National Policy on Internally Displaced Persons,” November 25, 2013, http://morr.gov.af/Content/files/National%20IDP%20Policy%20-%20FINAL%20-%20English(1).pdf, 14.
118. Alexandra Barton, “Water in Crisis—Middle East,” The Water Project, https://thewaterproject.org/water-in-crisis-middle-east.
119. John Vidal, “What Does the Arab World Do When Its Water Runs Out?” Guardian, February 19, 2011, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/feb/20/arab-nations-water-running-out.
120. James, “Export Oil, Import Water.”
121. Vidal, “What Does the Arab World Do?”
122. Julia Devlin, “Is Water Scarcity Dampening Growth Prospects in the Middle East and North Africa?” Brookings Institution, June 24, 2014, https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/is-water-scarcity-dampening-growth-prospects-in-the-middle-east-and-north-africa/.
123. “Climate Change Adaptation to Protect Human Health: Jordan Project Profile,” World Health Organization, http://www.who.int/globalchange/projects/adaptation/en/index5.html.
124. John Vidal, “Middle East Faces Water Shortages for the Next 25 Years, Study Says,” Guardian, August 27, 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/aug/27/middle-east-faces-water-shortages-for-the-next-25-years-study-says.
125. Jennifer Hattam, “Adapting to Climate Change in the Arid Middle East,” Tree-hugger, November 15, 2009, http://www.treehugger.com/corporate-responsibility/adapting-to-climate-change-in-the-arid-middle-east.html.
126. “Adaptation to Climate Change in the Middle East and North Africa Region,” World Bank, http://web.worldbank.org/archive/website01418/WEB/0__C-152.HTM.
127. Vidal, “What Does the Arab World Do?”
128. Commission of the European Communities, 2007, “Addressing the Challenge of Water Scarcity and Droughts in the European Union,” http://ec.europa.eu/environment/water/quantity/pdf/comm_droughts/impact_assessment.pdf.
129. Devlin, “Is Water Scarcity Dampening Growth Prospects?”
130. Zaria Gorvett, “Mediterranean States Must Work Together to Adapt to Water Scarcity—Prof. Ralf Ludwig,” Horizon, April 27, 2015.
131. Vidal, “What Does the Arab World Do?”
