Security Politics of Climate Change in the Levant

Kumarasamy, Ana Maria and Mabon, Simon (2023) Security Politics of Climate Change in the Levant. In: Climate Change, Conflict, and (In)Security : Hot War. Routledge Advances in Defence Studies . Routledge, London, pp. 100-119. ISBN 9781032455808

Abstract

In the Levant, climate change impacts questions of security and conflict in various ways. In recent years, the region has faced issues such as intense droughts, desertification, forest fires, and sandstorms leading to increasing political and economic challenges including internal displacement, human security challenges, and rising violence. This chapter focuses on state responses to climate change with a focus on security politics and how it affects the inhabitants of the region. The different states in the region have approached these challenges in myriad ways; however, regularly these processes have been shaped by corruption by governmental officials and the regulation of the inhabitants as opposed to effectively managing the environmental and human security implications of climate change. Taken together with other challenges such as economic deterioration, COVID-19, and political exclusion within the region, mass protests have erupted across the region from Basra in Iraq where the acute water crisis led to violent protests to Beirut and Mount Lebanon in Lebanon where the protests were initially ignited by the forest fires in 2019. This chapter argues that the devastating repercussions of climate change across the Levant have posed an array of challenges to political life across the region, affecting people in different ways conditioned by the complexities of time and space. It highlights that the organisation of political life within and between states is shaped by these crises, whilst the intersectional nature of climate change disproportionately affects those already living in precarious conditions. These compounding crises and protests have furthered the state’s agenda to continue the regulation of inhabitants as opposed improve climate change adaptation.