Rebalancing the Scale: Increasing Climate Resilience Through Social Protection in MENA

In MENA, climate change not only exposes but also intensifies existing inequalities through deliberate policy choices: governments continue to channel vast sums into fossil fuels while neglecting essential social protections, leaving women farmers, informal workers, and other marginalized groups trapped in cycles of poverty amid droughts, heatwaves, and ecosystem collapse. This paper examines structural failures step by step: climate shocks reveal colonial legacies and neoliberal austerity eroding services; agriculture and fishing livelihoods face devastation; fossil fuel reliance takes its toll; climate justice demands integrated social safeguards and rejects eco-imperialist green schemes that displace communities without rights. Key findings condemn regressive reforms that deepen exclusion, spike pollution, and ignore climate risks, and urge a pivot to codify universal protections with climate triggers, phase out subsidies to fund resilient infrastructure, and embed labor rights in green transitions. Ultimately, universal, climate-responsive social protection, defined by the ILO as policies and programs that prevent poverty, vulnerability, and exclusion through guarantees such as healthcare, income security, and support for children, the unemployed, the elderly, and the disabled, bolsters resilience for MENA’s vulnerable groups. Climatologist Friederike Otto argues that “the more unequal the society, the more severe the climate disaster,” pointing to colonial histories, gendered power structures, and poverty-blind policymaking that shape vulnerability.

To read the full report: Click here!