Workshop Focuses on Climate Adaptation, Water Conservation in Middle East and North Africa

DURHAM, N.C. - The Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University co-sponsored a two-day closed workshop, "Climate Adaptation in the Middle East and North Africa: Challenges and Opportunities," May 3 and 4 at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School.

The workshop brought together more than two dozen leading international experts and practitioners in climate adaptation and water management policies to analyze and prioritize policy measures related to the pressing challenges posed by climate change in the region.

Nicholas School Dean William L. Chameides delivered the keynote address on May 3.  Avner Vengosh, professor of earth and ocean sciences, participated in a session on water quality, health and disease on May 4. Erika Weinthal, associate professor of environmental policy, co-organized the workshop with Dubai Institute Fellow Jeannie Sowers of the University of New Hampshire.
The two-day event was part of the 2010 Dubai Initiative Conference, "Adaptation and Innovation in the Middle East," at Harvard.

Workshop topics included: Hydropolitics and climate adaptation; adaptation for coasts and cities; food security and agricultural adaptation; water quality, health and disease; and regional and international mechanisms for adaptation. Participants represented institutions and agencies from around the world, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Switzerland  and Palestine.

Ambassador R. Nicholas Burns, professor of the practice of diplomacy and international politics at the Harvard Kennedy School, delivered the workshop's second keynote address on May 4.

The Dubai Initiative is a joint venture of the Dubai School of Government and the Harvard Kennedy School and is part of the school's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

Concurrent with the conference and workshop, Sowers, Weinthal and Vengosh have co-authored a peer-reviewed paper, "Climate Change, Water Resources and the Politics of Adaptation in the Middle East and North Africa," in the April 23 online issue of the journal Climatic Change. In it, they assess the ways in which countries in the Middle East-North Africa (MENA) region are vulnerable to climate-induced impacts on their limited water resources, and analyze the political, economic and institutional drivers that are shaping government responses to these water issues.

"Adaptive governance strategies remain a low priority for political leaderships in the MENA region," Sowers, Weinthal and Vengosh write. "To date, most MENA governments have concentrated the bulk of their resources on large-scale supply side projects" such as desalination, dam construction, inter-basin water transfers or tapping fossil groundwater aquifers.

The governments rarely engage in policies or programs designed to help increase water-use efficiency, reduce water demand and promote conservation, the trio of scholars find: "We conclude that (these) key capacities for adaptive governance to water scarcity in MENA are underdeveloped."