PAPHOS, Cyprus | The Middle East will be particularly affected by global warming in the near future, with extreme temperatures and the decline of an oil-based economy as the world turns to renewables, experts say.
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“Our region is classified as a zone at risk of climate change” by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the World Meteorological Organization, a United Nations agency, Cypriot President Nicos recalled in mid-October. Anastasiades at the International Conference on Climate Change in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East.
Deficient in water, the region, where more than 500 million inhabitants live, has seen their temperatures rise twice as fast as the world average, or 0.45 degrees Celsius per decade since the 1980s, according to scientists.
Lands are deserting and sandstorms intensify, while the snow in the mountains becomes scarce and with it the water in the river systems on which millions of people depend.
And the region’s greenhouse emissions are now higher than those of the European Union, according to findings presented at the conference.
This summer, huge fires devastated Cyprus, Greece, Israel, Lebanon and Turkey and temperatures exceeded 50 degrees Celsius in Kuwait, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran.
“Anachronistic” oil
“These tragic events are not taken from a disaster film, it is about reality and the present”, recalled during the conference Laurent Fabius, president of the COP21, UN summit on the climate having succeeded. at the signing of the Paris Agreement in 2015.
This historic climate pact had seen almost the entire planet commit to containing global warming “significantly” below + 2 ° C and if possible +1.5 ° C.
But with the approach of the start of the COP26, which will take place in Glasgow (Scotland) from October 31, many countries in the Middle East have still not ratified the Paris agreement: Iran, the Iraq, Libya and Yemen.
The Middle East presents “serious problems” concerning global warming, summarizes Jeffrey Sachs, head of the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network (UNSDSN).
“First, this is the world’s center of hydrocarbons, on which many economies in the region depend, energies that have become anachronistic and that we must stop using,” says Dr. Sachs, professor at Columbia University in New York. .
“Secondly, it is an already dry region which will dry up, so there will be insecurity linked to water and the displacement of populations”, he warns, calling for “a massive change in the region” , despite the divisions.
“They just have to look at the sky. The sun’s rays give us the foundations for a new green economy, ”he says, referring to solar energy.
60 degree
By the end of the century, if nothing is done to limit greenhouse gas emissions, temperatures could rise to six degrees Celsius and more during extreme heat waves, warns the Dutch researcher in atmospheric chemistry Jos Lelieveld.
According to him, temperatures could exceed 60 degrees Celsius in cities, transformed into heat islands due to their density, asphalt and less vegetation.
“During heat waves, people die from sunstroke or cardiac arrest. Vulnerable people will suffer, ”Lelieveld told AFP.
This rise in temperatures could become “the roots of future conflicts”, worried Mr. Fabius, predicting an increase in tensions due to the scarcity of water.
Relations are already strained in several countries in the region, particularly around the management of water resources in the rivers of the Nile, the Jordan, the Euphrates and the Tigris.
Mr. Sachs said for his part that “the upheavals caused by the severe droughts have partially triggered and exacerbated the mass violence” observed during the Syrian conflict.
According to a controversial theory, the arrival of millions of peasants in Syrian cities due to record droughts between 2006 and 2009 exacerbated social tensions and created fertile ground for anti-regime protests in 2011, bloodily suppressed by Damascus.