In December 2015, delegates from all countries of the world will meet at the UN conference on climate change in Paris. The hope is that global community will achieve an agreement which would assure future global warming does not exceed 2°C compared to pre-industrial era.
Nothing against high level talks. Unfortunately earth’s climate does not seem to be impressed by conferences. It is now 20 years since the first UN Climate Change Conference (UNCCC) met in Berlin in 1995 and 18 years since Kyoto Protocol was agreed in 1997, yet climate did not take a note. Atmospheric concentration of CO2 — the main greenhouse gas — increased from 360 parts per million in 1995, to over 400 today, and the rate of growth actually accelerated.
Figures are abstract, but they are matter of life and death. Those born in early 1960’s, as I, breathed the air with 320 ppm of CO2. In less than one lifetime its concentration increased by 80 ppm: This is almost the same difference as between the CO2 concentration during the Ice Age and recent era. Never in the history of human species there was so much CO2 in atmosphere. When the Earth’s atmosphere had CO2 concentration comparable to current 400 ppm — some 3 million years ago — average global temperature was 3 to 4°C higher than today and sea levels 5-40 meters above current level.
It is sea level raise what captures imagination of people and what led Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), one of the UNCCC’s negotiating groups, to demand not to allow higher than 1.5°C global temperature increase. With 37 UN’s member states, AOSIS represents 20 percent of all members, but only a tiny fraction of global population.
No country will be spared of climate change consequences, but small islands are not the first ones to be devastated. Serious data point to other group of countries as being by far the most vulnerable to climate change — to countries of the Middle East and North Africa. Yet, judging from their positions at climate change conferences, it would appear their leaders are largely ignorant of the key risk to their countries’ future. One would expect Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Syria and other arid countries putting all their weight behind proposals of AOSIS group. But reality is different. Instead they negotiate alongside much less climate conscious countries such as China, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh in group called Like Minded Group of Developing Countries.
Why is the Arab world the most vulnerable to global warming? For whole complex of serious reasons: It is already now extremely arid and mostly desert, heavily dependent on import of food to sustain its fast growing population. According to UN Food and Agriculture organization, all Arab countries, from Morocco in the west to Oman in the east, had to import more than half of food calories needed to feed their people already before 2010. Since then the situation got worse: Most extreme seems to be Yemen, whose 26 million people are already 90 percent dependent on imported food.
Climate change induced droughts will make situation much worse. Nutrition and survival of 400 million Arab people are fully dependent on food, wheat in particular, imported from US, Canada, EU, Ukraine, Russia, Argentina, Australia and a handful of other moderate climate zone countries. All of them are already exposed to the effects of climate change, and will be more.
When an unprecedented heatwave hit western Russia and destroyed one third of Russian harvest in 2010, global food prices moved up by 40 percent within the next 7 months, triggering what went to history as “Arab Spring.”
When similar event — or, even worse, a long term drought — sets over US, the most significant wheat and corn exporter in the world, rise in global food prices will be even much worse. In worse case bad harvest in the USA (or Canada or Europe …) will trigger a famine in large part of the Arab world. There is no guarantee at all, that even radical and fast reduction in greenhouse gas emissions may stop further warming of our planet.
Arab countries can and should contribute much more to such effort. They can do it on a diplomatic field joining progressive negotiation groups such as AOSIS demanding much more radical global action than currently considered. And they also can significantly reduce their own emissions.
After all Qatar, Emirates, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia are all in the group of 20 largest per capita emitters of greenhouse gases. At the same time Arabian Aquifer System, on which the remaining food production of Gulf countries depends is already the most overstressed in the world and their capacity to produce food is shrinking fast. Leaders of Arab world may feel that as long as they have oil, they are safe. It is an illusion. Story of 26 million Yemenis tittering on the brink of famine already today should warn them all.
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Juraj Mesík is a former specialist with the World Bank
