Time is increasingly of the essence for decisive action to be taken to respond to the planetary crisis. Climate change-induced environmental change, degradation, and biodiversity loss are no longer future threats but are instead already upon us, driven by humankind’s polluting production processes and unsustainable consumption. Millions of people in the Arab States region rely directly on the land or water for their livelihoods, yet its countries are some of the most water-stressed on earth, and together they consume natural resources twice that of their biocapacity. Therefore, with the region’s history of fragility and conflict, there is strong potential for environmental degradation and insecurity to reinforce each other, with severe ramifications for its hard-won development gains, and the lives of its citizens.

This policy brief aims to examine the nexus between environmental change and security to consolidate the understanding of the challenges posed to human security in the region by environmental degradation, climate change, and resource scarcity. It finds that greater integrated efforts across policy, programming, and future research are needed to maximise the potential of interventions across both conflict and environmental degradation, and highlights some sound approaches to encourage more interconnected, coherent, and comprehensive responses.