Vulnerability, climate laws, and adaptation in the Middle East and North Africa

Abstract

Laws aimed at tackling climate change problems have grown significantly in the last two decades. Following this global trend and under pressure from international institutions and lenders, both rich, oil exporting (i.e., major greenhouse gas [GHG] emitters) and poor, non-oil rich (i.e., mostly vulnerable nations with lower shares of emission) states in the Middle East and North Africa have hastened to adopt new laws and regulations to mitigate and/or adapt to climate change. The question remains, however, does the adoption of these laws have any measurable impact on these nations' climate change performance? That is, to what degree do these laws have an impact on greenhouse gas emissions or adaptation capacity and readiness? Utilizing a panel data of 660 country-year observations (22 countries over 30 years), our cross-national statistical analysis shows that while climate change laws seem to have an impact on GHG emissions, they have so far failed to boost these nations' adaptation capacity. Our case study shows that oil politics and basic development objectives seem to be the key to this failure.