Published online: 01 Aug 2024
ABSTRACT
Crisis is a recurrent motif in discussions of the environment in the Middle East. Concerns about water scarcity, food insecurity, climate disasters, and resource degradation play into common associations of the region with conflict, malfunction, and despair. Yet this single story obscures as much as it illuminates. In this paper, I draw examples from my work on Nile water politics, climate change, and bread in Egypt to illustrate the power of this dominant narrative and its limitations. I reflect on the multiple stories that emerge when we shift our starting point or scale of analysis. I argue for the need to move beyond thinking about the environment just as a problem space to consider it as the space in which people are living their daily lives.
Acknowledgments
This paper is a revised version of the keynote talk that I presented at the British Society for Middle East Studies annual conference in Exeter in July 2023.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13530194.2024.2382125