Briefing Paper

Climate Change and the Water-Energy-Food Nexus in the MENA Region

Understanding the inter linkages between Climate Change and the water-energy-food securities is critical for developing effective strategies to adapt to projected changes and ensure sufficient access to these resources for a growing global population. This Policy Brief identifies some of the key factors and specific climate change impact in each of the water, energy and food sectors and possible adaptation strategies will be explored. Climate change is already happening; according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the Earth’s temperature has warmed faster in the last 3 decades than ever before since 1850; oceans have warmed around 0.11C per decade in the last 40 years. The rate of sea level rise is now more than 3 mm per year since the 1990s (due to
climate change and other aspects). These and other changes in climate such as precipitation have several implications for human systems.