Profits from rising oil prices in the current global markets could be used to better equip the Middle East to combat climate change and further stabilise the region, according to a top US diplomat.
The suggestion was one of many noted at the Atlantic Council’s Sustainable Security of the Middle East: Climate Change, Challenges and Prospects conference, where diplomats and academics emphasised the need to combat climate change as a way of working towards regional stability.
David Livingston, a senior adviser at the US State Department’s Office of the Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, also called the Middle East the ‘tip of the spear to fight the climate crisis’.
According to Mr Livingston, the Middle East region is the cradle of civilisation and is witnessing firsthand the effects of climate change much more severely than many other countries.
He urged scientists and academics to combine age-old traditions and technologies from the past, with new inventions and innovations to realise the full potential of the region’s citizens.
Developers in Bahrain have already started to step back in time using a traditional method of air conditioning homes, employing an adapted Bahraini ‘wind-catcher’ called a ‘badgeer’, as reported by the GDN and our sister publication, GulfWeekly.
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The badgeer was a traditional device used for many centuries to create natural ventilation in buildings and homes. The tall chimney-like structure was a natural air conditioner which used wind from four directions and channelled it down into the house.
To this day, they can be seen on the rooftops of old houses and buildings in parts of Muharraq and Manama and the tourist attraction Beit Shaikh Isa in Muharraq is a popular example of a badgeer in a Bahraini home.
Mr Livingston also lauded the efforts of countries like Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Oman and Iraq to cut their emissions and establish mid-century targets for offsetting carbon production.
To prove the point, as reported in Friday’s GDN, a major solar project that could power thousands of homes in the kingdom and provide reliable and sustainable energy is set to be developed at a landfill site in Askar.
The Electricity and Water Authority has launched its tendering process to appoint a qualified contractor to remediate the 2sqkm landfill site, to prepare the plot for the development and implementation of the solar project with a minimum capacity of 100MW.
The project will involve the design and construction of a landfill gas extraction and treatment system that will meet the standards set by the Supreme Council for Environment. It will also include land remediation, the development of gas and leachate management systems, and a drainage system to ensure the site’s readiness for construction and operation of the solar project.
Bahrain’s sustainability goals were announced by His Royal Highness Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, Crown Prince and Prime Minister, at the landmark UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) held last year in Glasgow, the UK.
Bahrain has committed to reaching net zero by 2060, with a number of interim goals to be hit by 2035 including reducing emissions by 30 per cent through decarbonisation and efficiency initiatives, quadrupling mangrove coverage, doubling tree coverage, and directly investing in carbon capture technologies.
Ahead of COP27 to be held this year in Cairo, Egypt, researchers and diplomats are urging countries to build deeper regional cohesion to combat climate change.
“The Middle East is warming at twice the rate as seen in other regions, which could come with its own stability and security impacts, as competition over limited resources intensifies,” Middle East Institute research fellow Aaisha Al Sarihi noted.
“Internal tensions over limited resources have already risen, in countries like Morocco, Syria and Tunisia and so far, the climate security nexus across the region has not been integrated to face these challenges.
“Resilience must be integrated into economic development and building on existing regional governance infrastructure like the Arab League and the GCC.”
National security and combating climate change go hand-in-hand, according to UAE Tolerance Minister Shaikh Nahyan bin Mubarak Al Nahyan, who went on to add that peace and stability was necessary to ensure climate change combating initiatives are successful.
Combating climate change will have to be on multiple fronts as its impacts are already being felt in a number of areas including healthcare, agriculture and tourism.
“Climate change is already contributing to health crisis in the region as we are seeing more non-communicable diseases arise from environmental factors,” explained Mazen Malkawi, the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) regional adviser for the Middle East and North Africa Centre for Environmental Health Action.
“According to a number of studies, an estimated one million people have died from diseases arising from environmental changes as a result of climate change.”
The WHO further estimates that between 2030 and 2050, climate change is expected to cause approximately 250,000 additional deaths per year, from malnutrition, malaria, diarrhoea and heat stress.
Food security in the region has also become an area of focus, with a number of countries researching and implementing climate-resilient crops and methods of farming.
Although tourism numbers this year have been rising, with an increase of 38pc in Bahrain alone between the first and second quarters of this year, Ms Al Sarihi warned that the increase in temperature could have a chilling effect for tourism-dependent economies.
To combat these issues, the speakers at the conference agreed that deeper cohesion is necessary, both regionally and internationally.
“Consensus is difficult to build internationally, which is where regional solutions are more pragmatic and culturally suitable,” added Arab Centre for Climate Change Policies director Carol Chouchani Cherfane.
naman@gdnmedia.bh
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