Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Syrian President Bashar Assad (AP)
[I]nternational reports on climate change are increasingly throwing the spotlight on the Middle East, where rapid development fueled by petrodollars is driving energy consumption skywards.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says the ratio of CO2 emissions to GDP is more than twice as high in the Middle East than in any other region of the developing world. It states that three Middle Eastern countries had the highest per capita CO2 emissions rate in the world in 2004: Qatar with 21.63 tons; Kuwait with 10.13 tons; and the United Arab Emirates on 9.32 tons. Meanwhile, the WWF’s Living Planet Report 2006 declared that the United Arab Emirates has the largest ecological footprint in the world, ahead of the United States. Taken as a whole, the United Nations says Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey account for 60.5% of the region’s total CO2 emissions. …
Reducing the region’s emissions will represent a significant challenge given that economic growth here is expected to keep demand for energy high for the foreseeable future. Furthermore, the Middle East also lags behind the rest of the world in developing renewable energy resources.
But if the most pessimistic scenarios concerning the impact of climate change on the Middle East are to be believed, then mitigation and adaptation measures have to be taken now, because, as Friends of the Earth Middle East warned in December, climate change could act as a threat multiplier in the region, exacerbating water scarcity and creating tensions over water within and between nations with vulnerable populations. Access the full article>>
