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Policy communities in the United States and Europe are increasingly identifying climate change, environmental deterioration, water management, and food security as key concerns for development and global governance. The interplay of these trends is visible in the upheavals across the Middle East, with food riots and water disputes illuminating the region’s food insecurity. In the five years before the uprising in Syria, for example, the country experienced one of the worst droughts on record, which decimated wheat production and wiped out livestock. In Yemen, tensions—and outright conflicts—over water rights and illegal wells underpin the ongoing insecurity and anti-government sentiment. There is little question that the effects of climate change will cause more extreme weather events and crop insecurity in the decades to come, and it is reasonable to expect that they will magnify such dangerous problems.
This issue brief looks at the food security situation in the Middle East and how the United States and its European partners can work together to confront the wide-ranging security challenges of climate change.
Michael Werz is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress. Benjamin Pohl works as a senior project manager for adelphi.
[The source of this text is the Center for American Progress]
