Youth in MENA don’t have energy to worry about climate change, IHE Delft alumni note in a prize-winning essay

“In the context of social, political and economic realities, people often devote little attention to climate change. In our journey as young water professionals, we often forget this, and as a result, our proposed climate resilience strategies don’t have the results we hope for.

As water researchers, we are surrounded by people who are concerned about climate and water challenges and immersed in climate activism. In between immense desk work and late nights in labs, we often forget that many people have little energy left to care for climate change, regardless of how vulnerable they are to its effects. If you face security threats and economic instability, these factors will dominate your daily concerns. Challenges such as socio-economic insecurities, political instabilities, internal conflicts or wars, often – understandably - dominate people’s perception of what is important.

In the MENA, climate change is increasingly affecting daily life. Injuries and death tolls from sand storms and heavy rains are on the rise. Sandstorms alone cost the region about USD13 billion per year. Scorching heat waves cancel work days and disrupt businesses. Flash floods are more frequent, causing fatalities and displacing thousands. Wildfires plague Algeria, Jordan and Tunisia. Changes in ecosystems also pose dangers: scorpion stings are on the rise in Egypt, while disease and snakebites following heavy flooding are a serious concern in Sudan.

Yet as young professionals working in the MENA region, we noticed that people outside the research community seldom link these events to climate change. Life in the MENA is economically demanding for most, and especially for youth (15 – 29 year-olds) who make up about 30% of its population. In low to middle-income MENA countries, life is often a crazy race to fulfill basic needs. A person needs to amass capital to get married, start a business, or follow higher education, while unemployment rates are high and most salaries barely cover bills and food. In Egypt, a worker’s average monthly income is USD250, while the average monthly costs of living exceed USD400. When you are already working double shifts and struggling for your basic needs, you won’t give a second thought to the climate change banner you see on your way to work or the climate change commercial you see on TV. People outside research communities are often not reached by awareness-raising efforts and feel distant from climate and environmental action. 

When we as researchers detach ourselves from such realities, the solutions we propose for climate resilience remain inapplicable or irrelevant to local communities. Without proper cooperation with local communities, even the most technically advanced climate resilience systems are bound to fail in the long run. Therefore, an important step to tackling climate change is realizing that water and climate challenges, although highly important, don’t exist in a vacuum – there are many other insecurities in people’s lives. For a climate resilience system to be effective, it needs to be tailor-made for a specific community and take its needs into consideration. To educate a community about climate action and climate activism you need to approach them through their everyday concerns and convince them that climate change is affecting their everyday lives.

Local communities, if empowered, are a powerful tool for change. But many communities face day-to-day struggles that hinder them from engaging in climate activism and climate action. As researchers and professionals in the field, we need to think beyond our books and laboratories. We need to work on innovative solutions that are close to local communities.”

Toka Mahmoud, a freelance water researcher, graduated from IHE Delft in 2022 with an MSc in Water Management and Governance. Mostafa Saleh, a coastal hydrodynamics researcher at Deltares, graduated from IHE Delft in 2021 with an MSc in Hydroinformatics. Their winning entry in the CASCADES Project is available on this link.