Environmental Crises in West Asia/Middle East

Collaboration in the Middle Eastern Environmental Crisis
The environmental crisis has already touched many parts of the world, and recently become an urgent issue in Western Asia and North Africa. Especially around a precious resource: water—just this last month there were clashes at the Kyrgyzstan-Tajikistan over a water dispute. One of the largest saltwater lakes in the world, Lake Urmia in Iran, has all but dried up and experts and unfortunately it is unsurprising since the region is 6 times more water-stressed than the global average (Schaar, 1). Land degradation, desertification, and droughts are all huge issues for the region as well and encourage consistent agricultural imports. There have also been more and more instances of unrest over natural resources in the region in addition to the ones mentioned, tensions are also rising in parts of Iraq as well as Palestine, both of whom have limited access to clean or running water (one is due to a colonizer and one is a result of postcolonialism). This leans in to my area of focus a bit because these seemingly far and between uprisings are going to become bigger and bigger problems. I can only imagine the liberty with which “terrorism” is going to be used to describe upcoming environmental resistance movements that result from postcolonialism, neo-imperialism, and resource extraction—that will inevitably be repackaged as related to religion or ethnicity or hatred of America or something else arbitrary, I’m sure.

“The MENA region is the only major area in the world where poverty is increasing, and this increase is largely associated with ongoing conflicts.10 As always, it is the poorest, most marginalized, and unprotected who suffer the most from the interlinked environmental crises.” (Schaar, 1)

This quote from The Century Foundation rings very true as we have learned this semester, however this report was written with support from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. So although there was a lot of great information presented in this report, and much of it was surprisingly progressive in pushing for non-intervention, there was also not a single mention of postcolonialism or capitalism anywhere. It wasn’t just this report, in the NPR article there is a constant tone of blame and finger pointing at Iran for “mismanaging water”—but what does this mean? With the Kyrgyzstan-Tajikistan water conflict there was only mention of border tensions as opposed to a more critical analysis of how postcolonial borders and territories have wreaked absolute havoc on the Asian and African continents. The most thorough of the sources I chose to highlight was still the TCF because they at least acknowledged that much of the rising poverty we see in the region is due to ongoing conflict, but they will not say with whom or why.

Ultimately if we are not being brutally honest about global issues, we are never going to get meaningful, satisfactory resolutions. You cannot chide MENA governments for “water mismanagement” when they literally have to focus on human rights or national security. Western models of “sustainable development” are not only inaccessible for most of the world, but they are very expensive and as more research shows, unsustainable. Of course the worst climate change is affecting one of the most poverty stricken areas in the world, the two are heavily correlated—you could argue that worsening climate change is a product of poverty conditions brought about by postcolonial conflict. Telling MENA countries to basically “work together and figure it out” is leaving out the biggest issue: postcolonial capitalist demand for oil and petroleum products. I cannot believe that there was not a single mention of this; how can you tell these economies to “invest in renewable energy” when they are pressed to supply one of the most powerful limited resources in the world? A resource that has cost the region human lives through Western intervention and neo-imperialism? It is dishonest to propose environmental solutions without full context; it is not that there “aren’t enough resources” or overpopulation—two very regressive takes on environmentalism—it is that the problem at hand is intrinsically tied to Western imperialism, postcolonialism, and capitalism.

A solution that the TCF report did push that I thought was halfway there was the need for transboundary solidarity and collaborative action—two very important things in the process of decolonization as well. The other half that I think was missing was internationalism and decolonization of sustainability; we cannot push a Western model of sustainable development because it is largely not sustainable or effective. As far as internationalism: unless the global population demands a massive push away from oil and petroleum based products, we will see absolutely no change. As long as capitalism demands oil and petroleum products in the global market, we will see continued postcolonial and neo-imperial conflict in the area, more human suffering, and so much more environmental degradation—these issues cannot be separated from one another. While yes this region definitely requires Western non-intervention, it still absolutely requires global solidarity and collaboration in its fight against capitalism and imperialism if it wants to stand a chance against further environmental degradation. It will be people that change the world, not governments.


 * 1) BBC News. “Deadly Fighting on Kyrgyzstan-Tajikistan Border Kills at Least 31.” BBC News, 30 Apr. 2021, www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-56940011.
 * 2) Doubek, James. “NPR Cookie Consent and Choices.” National Public Radio, 12 Nov. 2019, choice.npr.org/index.html?origin= https://www.npr.org/sections/pictureshow/2019/11/12/751360322/the-death-and-life-of-irans-lake-urmia.
 * 3) Schaar, Johan. “What the World Can Do about the Middle East’s Coming Environmental Crisis.” The Century Foundation, 15 Dec. 2020, tcf.org/content/report/world-can-middle-easts-coming-environmental-crisis.