By Aisha Al-Sarihi
By tradition, the COP Presidency rotates among the five recognised United Nations regions – Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, Central and Eastern Europe and Western Europe, and Others. So far, two Arab countries have hosted the UN Climate Change Conference, the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC): Morocco (COP 7, in 2001, and COP 22, in 2016) and Qatar (COP 18, in 2012). Two upcoming COP meetings will be hosted consecutively by Arab countries, Egypt (COP 27, in 2022), and the United Arab Emirates (COP 28, in 2023).
While the COP serves a continuation of formal negotiations from its preceding session, it also offers an opportunity for the host country to push for climate action which reflects its own and regional interests, as well as special national circumstances. What can we expect from Egypt and the UAE as hosts, and what are the major regional climate issues that they should raise?
The last COP, held in 2021 under the United Kingdom’s presidency, marked the finalisation and adoption of the Paris Agreement Rulebook, a set of implementation guidelines to execute the Paris Agreement, adopted in 2015. Among other things, the negotiations around the Paris Agreement Rulebook brought a close to discussions around carbon markets, global stocktake – the process for monitoring implementation of the agreement – common timeframe and transparency. COP 26 also witnessed parties’ adoption of the so-called Glasgow Climate Pact, a set of decisions taken to strengthen ambitions around the three pillars of collective climate action in the Paris Agreement: Mitigation, adaptation, and finance. Apart from these, the UK government’s agenda at COP 26 reflected its special climate interests, including in areas of deforestation, agriculture and commodity trade, halting funding for overseas fossil fuel projects, boosting zero emission vehicles, and transitioning away from coal, which were memorably encapsulated by Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s slogan of action on “coal, cars, cash and trees”.
Though the COPs hosted by Egypt and the UAE will continue discussions on the main pillars of the Paris Agreement, Arab countries face different climate challenges, and require unique solutions to address them. The Arab region – stretching across more than 13 million square kilometres in Africa and Asia – is characterised by a variety of climate zones, natural ecosystems, as well as disparate levels of wealth: Barely functioning fragile states, emerging economies, and hydrocarbon-rich states with some of the highest GDP per capita rates in the world. Despite these differences, the region as a whole faces common climate change-related challenges, including rising temperatures, water and food security, and extreme weather events.
Temperatures in the region are forecast to rise faster than the global average: By 1.2°C–1.9°C by 2046–2065, and 1.5°C–2.3°C by 2081-2100 under a moderate-case scenario, and 1.7°C–2.6°C and 3.2°C–4.8°C, respectively, under the worst-case scenario. The region has already been classified as the world’s most water-stressed, possessing only 1 per cent of the world’s total renewable freshwater resources, by the World Resource Institute’s Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas.
Rising temperatures will worsen the situation. While 90 per cent of the population there has access to safe drinking water, 18 of 22 Arab countries stand below the renewable resources scarcity annual threshold of 1,000 cubic metres per capita per year, and 13 of them stand below the absolute water scarcity threshold of 500 cubic metres per capita per year. The Arab region is also the world’s most food import–dependent one, and arid conditions and limited water resources, compounded by climate change, will affect food production and put further strain on food security and vulnerability to international price volatility. For economies that rely heavily on agriculture, the situation is even more dire: Water scarcity is estimated to lower agricultural output by 21 per cent in value by 2080, and cost between 6 -14 per cent of GDP by 2050.
At COP 26, updated or new Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) – efforts by individual countries to reduce emissions and plans to combat climate change – were submitted. Despite this, projections suggest that by 2100, the planet will warm by 2.6-2.8 degrees C, way beyond the Paris Agreement’s target of 1.5-2.0 deg C. Furthermore, financing for climate adaptation projects in developing countries is still way behind the curve: An estimated US$70 billion is required, but current figures, based on recent pledges, suggest only US$40 billion will be available.
For the Arab countries hosting COP, particularly Egypt, this should mean putting adaptation funding at the forefront of discussions. Both countries could help by creating further avenues of collaboration between developed and developing countries to help support the transfer of know-how in order to enable implementation of innovative solutions to water and food security in the region.
The Arab region’s experience with more frequent extreme weather events, including heatwaves, prolonged periods of drought, floods and wildfires, should also push this to the top of agenda. The Glasgow Pact highlighted the issue of extreme weather events under so-called loss and damage, referring to the actual impacts of climate change. But given the contentiousness of the issue, it diverted discussion towards the funding of activities to avert, minimise, and address loss and damage associated with the adverse impacts of climate change, rather than compensating countries for the impacts. The Arab COP hosts should push the discussions towards the latter. Specifically, they can press for the creation of, for example, new climate partnerships that enable capacity building and transfer of know-how, within or between Arab countries and relevant nations, to deal with extreme weather events.
For the hydrocarbon-rich states, especially the Gulf Arab ones, COP 28 will provide the opportunity for them to highlight the importance of addressing the impact of climate change response measures undertaken by other nations which will affect them by reducing demand for their major sources of income – oil and gas exports. Hydrocarbon-rich countries, including Saudi Arabia, have historically pushed back against moves to transition away from oil and gas which they have deemed “too aggressive”, and succeeded in reflecting this in the UNFCCC text, adopted in 1992, and in the Paris Agreement. COP 28 in the UAE will give them a further opportunity to reiterate their concerns.
Apart from reflecting on the national and regional interests in climate negotiations, COP 27 and 28 can also be expected to raise public awareness of climate change challenges and solutions in the region, not only at the government and business levels, but also among the Arab public. In the long-term, this could spur the public to play an active role in addressing climate-related issues at the national level, especially since the two conferences will be held consecutively within the region. Public education can help raise awareness about how individuals can help in the climate fight, by reducing consumption, for instance. Growing awareness could also prod governments to accelerate action on climate change. But perhaps most importantly, it could spark entrepreneurial innovations in the green energy sector – which are in line with the region’s focus on this area as part of their economic diversification plans. The number of events to be held either prior to or after the COP meetings, including World Youth Forum and the Middle East and North Africa Climate Week 2022, will play an important role in this regard.
If the upcoming Arab COPs carry on the tradition of using a slogan representing regional climate issues, perhaps an apt one to address the unique climate challenges for the region would be “sun, water, carbon, and cash”.
Image caption: An aerial photograph shows a partial view of the abandoned village of Al-Madam, bordering the Gulf Emirate of Sharjah, half buried in the desert sand, on 22 April 2021. Photo by Giuseppe Cacace / AFP.
About the Author
Dr Aisha Al-Sarihi’s areas of research expertise and interest include clean energy policy and climate economics, policies and governance, with a focus on the Arab region.
Following her PhD, from 2016 to 2017, she was a research officer at the London School of Economics and Political Science’s Middle East Centre. She was also a former visiting scholar at Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington (2017) and Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies (2018). Before joining MEI, Dr Al-Sarihi was a research associate in the Climate and Environment Program at King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center (KAPSARC) from 2019 to 2021.
She holds a PhD from the Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial College London and a MSc and a BSc, with distinction, in environmental science from Sultan Qaboos University.
