Overview

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

OVERVIEW

Economies in the Middle East and North Africa have a window of opportunity to make their economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic a green one while tackling two major challenges ahead: environmental degradation and climate change. This chapter briefly lays out the structure of this report on the issues that the region’s “blue” assets—namely, its skies and seas—face. The region’s various forms of natural capital are under many pressures, but the report focuses on three particularly urgent ones: air pollution, marine-plastic pollution, and coastal erosion.

The pandemic and the economic crisis it induced have shown the world, and also the Middle East and North Africa, that these varying shocks can hit in ways both unexpected and unprecedented. Although the impacts and consequences of these shocks are still playing out, it is important to recognize the other crisis that has been unfolding more quietly but steadily over recent decades: the region’s environmental degradation. Additionally, the looming threat of climate change is becoming clearer as it exacerbates some of pollution’s adverse effects on the region’s natural assets and threatens widespread social, health, and economic devastation.

The recovery from COVID-19 provides the Middle East and North Africa with a unique set of circumstances to mount a concomitant response to these next looming crises—and brings the region to a crossroads where some important decisions must be made: Will the region’s economies continue down the “brown growth” path that has led to the