Environmental security in the Middle East and North Africa: approaches, policy patterns, and activism trends

This chapter discusses the concept of environmental security and how the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region fits into broader theoretical debates in two main ways: by embracing popular arguments such as environmentally induced conflicts and environmental threats to national security; and by problematizing the normative implications and orientalist legacy of the securitizing and developmentalist approach to the environment. Moving from the assumption that the MENA region is an emblematic case of contested approaches to environmental security, the chapter also explores how differently this notion is articulated in policy terms, especially in its over-emphasis on top-down green transitions. It then offers a cursory look at Arab citizens’ environmental priorities and how they stand compared to other pressing concerns based on international surveys. Lastly, the chapter reflects on the complex physiognomy of environmental activism regionwide by positing the importance of framing the environment as another arena for negotiation and renegotiation of faltering social contracts that can be hardly disconnected from closely interrelated issues of social justice, marginalization, regime legitimacy, and forms of knowledge production