Six months until COP28: climate trends in the Middle East

In six months’ time, the United Arab Emirates will play host to COP28: the UN-convened global climate summit that has become a must-attend event on the world calendar in recent years.

The objective of COPs is to mobilise action, keep track of progress and encourage accountability. At a time where COPs have become criticised as having become talking shops, the UAE has put the focus on COP28 under its hosting on delivering firm action.

With the World Meteorological Association predicting that global temperatures are set to surge in the next five years, overall global progress towards the goals of the Paris Agreement of 2015 remains slow.

It may be a coincidence that both COP27 and COP28 were hosted by Arab World countries – with COP27 in Egypt labelled as an African event - but the summits are shining a spotlight on the effects of climate change in the Middle East.

How is climate change affecting the Middle East?

The Middle East can be broken down into three broad areas: the Arabian Gulf, the Levant and North Africa. Economically and socially, there is much difference within the region. However, one of the unifying factors is that the Middle East as a whole has one of the most fragile environments of any inhabited area on Earth. The Brookings Institute refers to climate change in the region as a “threat multiplier”. With many countries in the region already politically delicate, environmental stress, especially droughts, is contributing to waves of mass migration flows within and outbound from the region, pushing families in shrinking usable rural land areas into urban areas, across borders, and even into Europe in the search for work, food and stability.

However, this is not a new regional pressure point. The effects of climate change on regional politics were already being experienced more than a decade ago. The Arab Spring of 2010/11, which saw a number of governments toppled and unrest elsewhere, is widely seen to have been underpinned by leadership failures to address the impact of water, electricity and food shortages.

A small number of Arab World governments have so far stated bold future climate-based objectives, with the UAE taking the lead with its Net Zero 2050 strategy. That said, the governments with the greatest financial ability to drive a lower carbon agenda remain those with traditional hydrocarbon-based economies, and these income streams still remain uppermost critical to their national wealth – part of the reason why the UAE’s hosting of COP28 is proving controversial among some global stakeholders.

A lagging regional private sector

In recent years COP has morphed away from a purely political event to one which is aimed at non-state actors too. Its success in this area so far is mixed, with governmental and NGO personnel having comprised the bulk of attendees.

In January, US Climate Envoy John Kerry stated that “The private sector is absolutely key to our ability to win” the fight against climate change, especially in providing needed capital and driving technological innovation.

With an increasing focus on the climate era, where does this leave the private sector in the Arab World? So far, overall visible involvement remains fairly low; much of which is put down to a lack of knowledge and decision paralysis about where to start. However, possibly following a number of regionally-based firms now starting to miss their own climate-based targets, we are also now seeing a regional trend towards ‘green hushing’, triggered by fear of the impact of publicly stating goals which later on prove unreachable. Certainly, participation from Gulf countries in Race to Zero, the flagship UN campaign designed to attract non-state actors (such as the private sector, investors and whole cities) in the push to drive a global carbon recovery, has been minimal given governmental ambitions. Indeed, within the country that is hosting COP28 later this year, the vast majority of UAE private sector entities that have signed up to the campaign so far are academic institutions. The question is: is the private sector in the Middle East doing its own thing? Some firms certainly are. But are most doing anything to decarbonize and adapt to climate change? The lack of transparent disclosure makes the overall picture hard to gauge accurately.

Are consumers catching up?

Multiple surveys show that sustainability has now started to creep into public consciousness in the region in terms of consumer purchasing decisions, and trends in travel/tourism. The one thing the studies agree on is that this seems to have accelerated since the COVID-19 pandemic. However, there remains a great disparity in attitudes between socio-economic levels and, with much of the region’s population on low incomes against a backdrop of the rising cost of living, recent surveys also reveal that price sensitivity is gaining in dominance again. More than a third of Middle East respondents in PwC’s recent Global Consumer Insights Survey (Pulse 5) said that rising prices in the shops were their biggest concern and 62% have implemented cost-saving strategies. If the studies are to be believed, however, Gen X is as, if not more, engaged as Gen Z in the move towards the buying of more environmentally conscious products and asking questions of the companies they buy from. This is different to many other parts of the world where younger generations are generally more active.

So what needs to happen in the region?

Climate change action remains downplayed or even ignored by many of the Arab World governments which lack the financial and technical resources to implement effective measures. This is unlikely to change in the short to medium term. Pressure on fast-depleting water resources, in particular, has the potential to destabilise nations and economies further. We expect that COP28 will include a strong call to action for the private sector globally to step up in the pursuit of solutions, and it is certainly now critical that the private sector in the Arab World, as one of the most environmentally fragile regions in the world yet with great concentrated wealth in some areas, now visibly comes to the forefront to play its role in the survival of the region’s future. ?

As we approach these discussions, Lexington will be sharing a series of insight pieces, looking at customer expectations, sector innovations, and how businesses such as yours can have the greatest impact on climate mitigation and adaptation in the region and beyond which will have a lasting effect far beyond COP28.

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For more information about Lexington’s sustainability and responsible business advisory offering in the Middle East, please contact Sarah Bartlett, Head of Middle East, at [email protected]