POMEPS Studies 46: Environmental Politics in the Middle East and North Africa

In February 2022, POMEPS convened a virtual workshop bringing together interdisciplinary contributions from anthropology, public health, political science, history, and human geography. Their geographic scope includes Morocco, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Turkey, Kuwait, and other Gulf countries. The papers grapple with the complexity and diversity of environmental politics and issues across the Middle East. In doing so, they contribute to important trends that have emerged in international and comparative environmental politics more broadly. Many of the papers highlight the importance of field-based research in producing insightful analyses, and all raise important and innovative questions that should inform future research in this area.

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Introduction: Environmental Politics in the Middle East and North Africa

Jeannie Sowers & Marc Lynch

Soil, Dirt, Earth: Deserts, Rural Communities, and Power in Jordan

Taraf Abu Hamdan

Living with a Future Submergence: Dams, Temporality and Sacrifice in Northeastern Turkey

Ekin Kurtiç

What Displacement Teaches us about Surviving Changed Climates

Kali Rubaii

Climate, The Environment and Health of Migrant Workers: Lessons from Kuwait

Barrak Alahmad

Arab Climate Urbanism: An Ecological Fix?

Deen Sharp

Between ‘Suffering’ and ‘Surfing’: Environmental Sustainability Management and its Transnational Dynamics on the Arabian Peninsula

Tobias Zumbrägel

Words, Water, and Waste: How Government Discourse Shapes Environmental Protest in Lebanon and Jordan

Jérémie Langlois & Marwa Daoudy

The Sanitization of Garbage Politics: A Case for Studying Waste at the Local, State, and International Politics in the MENA

Lauren M. Baker

Environmentalism without Environmentalists? Climate Change and the State in Turkey

Murat Arsel & Fikret Adaman

New Constructions of Environmental Orientalism: Climate Change Mitigation Solar Power Projects in the Sahara Desert

Khaoula Bengezi

https://pomeps.org/category/memos/environmental-politics-in-the-mena

The Project on Middle East Political Science (POMEPS) Elliott School of International Affairs