Middle East and greenhouse gas emissions

The Middle East is largely desert, with limited annual precipitation and limited usable freshwater sources. Increased consumption of Middle Eastern petroleum and related fossil fuels appears to be increasing atmospheric CO₂ concentrations, and reliance upon those resources causes the relative political instability of the region to have disproportionate effects on global socioeconomic stability.

Background

The Middle East comprises the sovereign states of the Eastern Mediterranean and North Africa, as well as those states along the Persian Gulf north of the Indian Ocean. Political definitions of the Middle East normally include the states of Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Yemen, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, and Iran and the quasi-state territories of Palestine. These nations often act as a geopolitical bloc, because many of them are unified by their interests in the global oil market and their largely Muslim populations. The region is more than 92 percent Muslim, and it contains over 60 percent of known global oil reserves, as well as over 36 percent of natural gas reserves.

Petroleum Production

Middle Eastern oil reserves from both conventional and unconventional sources combined are estimated at over 750 billion barrels. In 2022, the Middle East was responsible for 27 percent of all global oil production. Middle Eastern oil reserves may be divided into three categories, in a formula known as 3P: what is provable, what is probable, and what is possible. These are all based on measurable analytic estimates and hypotheses or directly known from instruments used in petroleum exploration.

Saudi Arabia is arguably the most progressive state in the Middle East in the sense that it has outlined the region's most aggressive, long-term goal of preparing for a future without oil. Saudi Arabian society must be restructured to find alternative sources of economic wealth and diversification to replace lost oil revenues. The Saudis seek to support their growing population with food and water, among other resources, without a high dependence on fossil fuels. Nonetheless, Saudi Arabia consistently maintains the title of the largest oil producer in the world, as well as one of the largest consumers of oil. In 2018, the country reported 266.2 billion barrels of crude oil reserves. By 2021, this number increased to nearly 267.2 billion barrels, or 17 percent of the total global reserves, along with a production of over 12 million barrels per day, or 12 percent of global output.

Climate change represents a significant threat to the people and nations of the Middle East. Warming in the region is likely to spread desertification, which would reduce the already marginal vegetation cover. Ironically, much of the regional Middle Eastern economy is overwhelmingly dependent on oil production, which is seen as one of the major contributors to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and global warming, because burning oil releases carbon dioxide (CO₂) into the atmosphere.

Water Desalination

Middle Eastern countries have worked for decades to increase freshwater supplies and develop desalination technology. The Middle East accounts for 75 percent of global water desalination. In 2009, Saudi Arabia—the world’s largest producer of desalinated water—had thirty desalination plants that supplied 70 percent of national drinking water needs for the 2009 population of 29 million people. The Red Sea facility at Shoaiba, for example, a multiflash distillation operation, uses intense hot steam from a local power plant to boil out the salts from water. Using this method, among others, the Saline Water Conversion Corporation produces three million cubic meters of potable water daily at its twenty-seven stations.

Israel is also a high-tech leader in desalination, with a volume of 108 million cubic meters of freshwater produced daily in 2021 at the Israeli Ashkelon desalination facility alone, which uses seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) technology. This facility was one of the world’s largest SWRO operations for many years, but in 2022, Saudi Arabia took this title when they opened Rabigh 3 IWP, the world's cleanest-running distillation plant capable of producing 600,000 m3 per day. Given the need for ample water production to support growing populations in the arid climate and the need for advancement of technology capable of producing distilled water in climate-friendly ways, Middle Eastern countries continually aim to improve their water distillation processes. The United Arab Emirates constructed a distillation plant at the end of 2022 that may be capable of rivaling Saudi Arabia's plant.

If the Middle East could increase its collective water desalination efforts by 1,000 percent, it could theoretically produce enough freshwater to alter the region’s climate. Such a quantity of freshwater would make it possible to sustain significant vegetation and forestation programs that could cause increased humidity and give rise to a sustainable regional hydrologic cycle. If this cycle were achieved, it could transform the desert into a sustainable agricultural region.

Major obstacles stand in the way of such a program, however. The necessary desalination technologies would be extremely energy intensive, practically requiring that they be powered by renewable energy sources such as solar and wind power to avoid depleting even the Middle East’s energy reserves. Because the Middle East enjoys high levels of insolution, solar-powered desalination is not beyond the realm of theoretical possibility, and many global pioneering efforts in solar energy technologies are funded by Middle Eastern venture capital.

Water Rights

Gudea of Lagash, ruler of Neo-Sumeria circa 2100 b.c.e., made a statement four millennia ago that may resonate during the twenty-first century: “He who controls water controls life.” This statement is increasingly true in the Middle East, where marginal water sources are increasingly sources of conflict, and the United Nations is encountering increasing difficulties in mediating disputes.

Sovereign Middle Eastern states involved in water rights disputes include Israel, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan, where mountain ranges of the Amana and Hermon Mountains and the Golan Heights lie in the territories of multiple countries. The Amana Mountains are primarily in Lebanon, but their Mediterranean coastal rain shadow extends to Syria. The Hermon Mountain massif is shared between Syria and Israel. The contested Golan Heights are shared between Israel and Syria.

The Jordan River watershed, issuing from the Sea of Galilee, is a highly charged geopolitical battleground: Jordan has long claimed that the technologically adept Israel supports its agricultural needs by siphoning off at least 70 percent of the watershed above the Jordanian border, leaving little water for Jordan’s own agriculture and reducing its potential self-sustenance while increasing its need to import food. If climate change renders the Middle East increasingly arid, water rights will become an even more acrimonious issue, potentially further destabilizing the tense region where the Jewish state of Israel and its predominantly Muslim neighbors coexist uneasily and where tensions between Sunni and Shiite Islam and between secular and religious factions and states also cause unrest.

Increasing desertification as a result of climate change is predicted by scientists unless growth in regional desalination can compensate for lowering water tables combined with higher demand for rainwater. Overconsumption of water resources (for example, by denizens of the Jordan Valley in the Levant) results in smaller bodies of water (for example, the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea), which increases desertification by reducing the available watershed and increases evaporation by increasing the overall land temperature.

Potential Reforestation

Portions of the eastern Mediterranean landscapes of the Levant now composing Israel were covered in antiquity by dense forests that were lost over time. Palynological studies of remnant pollen verify that this ancient hill forest comprised oak and other hardwoods, among other species. Photographs from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries show, however, that the coastal hills were completely denuded of trees in an arid landscape. Systematic, extensive planting of thousands of hardy pine trees, mostly fast-growing Aleppo pines acclimated to aridity, began in Israel in the 1950s.

Meteorological records kept since 1948 show that the annual average Israeli rainfall in the 1950s was around 25 to 30 centimeters. As the new pine forests matured, they cooled the surrounding air and mitigated surface temperatures, drastically altering rainfall. Moisture-laden air off the Mediterranean had previously risen over these hot hills and kept going since the dew point was too high to cause precipitation. With cooler temperatures from forest cover, there was a marked increase in orographic precipitation at lower elevations, as the dew point lowered significantly. Thus, rainfall in Israel increased dramatically over the fifty years between 1950 and 2000, reaching around 1 meter annually. This reforestation practice is known to be effective and could potentially change microclimates all over the Middle East, especially where moisture-laden winds from bodies of water could be “harvested” to produce rainfall for agriculture.

Solar Energy

Middle Eastern states such as Saudi Arabia and Israel are pioneering solar energy research and experimental projects. The amount of sunlight in the Middle East exceeds that of most other global regions, so solar energy has an extremely high potential there. Near Ashdod and in the Negev area, 330 sunny days per year are normal, and Israel capitalized on this resource in 2018, building one of the world’s most progressive solar energy facilities, with many hectares of solar collectors placed on solar “farms,” some using rotating dishes made from mirrors. One Negev site alone covers 400 hectares.

The rotating-mirror solar collection can harness 75 percent of incoming sunlight, which is about five times the proportion harvestable using traditional solar panels. The technology also reduces the quantity of photovoltaic cells needed by a factor of about one thousand. Israel's goals for progress by 2025 included harvesting 8 percent of its electricity from solar power plants, and by 2030, the country hopes to reach 30 percent. Many countries in the region share similar sustainability goals with great potential to reduce dependence on carbon-emitting fossil fuels and also to power desalination for agricultural needs.

Context

The Middle East is a geographic and geopolitical bloc that often operates on ideological commonalities reinforced by shared language, culture, and religion. It is predominantly Arabic in language and Islamic in culture. Additionally, its shared climate zone is overwhelmingly arid, bordering on desert, with overall annual precipitation under 20.8 centimeters. Only Lebanon and parts of Syria exceed this annual precipitation average, usually by only a small margin.

The arid Middle East, as a geographic and geopolitical unit, is particularly vulnerable to global warming because it is already under climatic stress. The region contains the majority of the world’s known petroleum reserves, which only complicates this economic and climatic problem because its economic health is likely to diminish as a result of decreased global reliance on fossil fuels.

Although models by which one can infer climatic relationships are becoming increasingly sophisticated, one of the most difficult tasks ahead may be to differentiate between correlation and causation in global warming, especially given the increasing fossil fuel carbon footprint. The Middle East, with its enormous but nonrenewable energy reserves, is vital to the future of anthropogenic climate change.

Key Concepts

• desalination: removal of soluble salts from water, usually to make it potable or suitable for irrigation
• dew point: the temperature at which airborne water vapor condenses
• Fresnel lenses: small plastic sheets with very small, patterned, concentric circles stamped or milled into them that concentrate sunlight
• orographic precipitation: rainfall caused by rising topography that cools moisture-laden marine air
• paleoclimatology: the scientific study of ancient climates
• palynology: the study of relict pollen from ancient pollen traps
• water rights: the rights of sovereign states or other legal entities to contested water supplies

Bibliography

Atlas of Israel: Cartography, Physical and Human Geography. New York: Macmillan, 1985. Documents and maps all geophysical data available in Israel from over forty years of quantitative measurements from meteorology, oceanography, demography, and other parameters.

BP [British Petroleum]. Statistical Review of World Energy, June, 2008. London: Author, 2008. Reveals that regional and global oil production fell during 2008 for the first time since 2002, mostly as a result of changing crude oil costs tied to economically driven conservation.

Carpenter, William J. “The Biggest Oil Producers in the Middle East.” Investopedia, Dotdash Meredith , 29 Sept. 2022, www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/101515/biggest-oil-producers-middle-east.asp. Accessed 17 Jan. 2023.

Hyne, Norman J. Nontechnical Guide to Petroleum Geology, Exploration, Drilling, and Production. 42d ed. Tulsa, Okla.: PennWell, 2019. Accessed 17 Jan. 2023. Explains key concepts of geology and applied engineering relevant to the petroleum industry globally; provides useful statistics on Middle Eastern oil production.

“Middle Eastern Oil Consumption Shows Strong Growth.” Bahrain Tribune, April 9, 2009. Reports that global consumption of Middle Eastern oil rose to 6.2 million barrels per day in 2007, representing a 4.4 percent increase over 2006 consumption. Examines this growth from the perspectives of both GHG emissions and Middle Eastern economic health.

“Saudi Arabia’s Prince Nayef: A Rising but Enigmatic Prince.” The Economist 10 Apr. 2009. www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2009/04/02/a-rising-but-enigmatic-prince. Accessed 17 Jan. 2023. Suggests potential trends in current Saudi Arabian succession for the royal Saudi family, acknowledging that Saudi Arabia contains 25 percent of the known global oil reserves; discusses how political succession might impact those reserves.

“Saudi Arabia.” Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, 2022, www.opec.org/opec‗web/en/about‗us/169.htm. Accessed 15 Jan. 2022.