Abstract
Climate is changing and mitigation of the corresponding impacts requires assessment of vulnerability and adaptation building. This issue is particularly important in Middle East and North Africa (MENA), which is recognized as one of the most water scarce regions of the world and vulnerable to climate change. Therefore, the objective of this study was an assessment of the different sectors’ vulnerability as well as the overall vulnerability of the MENA countries to climate change. The Notre Dame-Global Adaptation Index (ND-GAIN) was used to investigate climate change vulnerability. Cluster analysis revealed the very high, high, medium and low levels of vulnerability for the MENA countries by distinguishing their extent of exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity. Further results indicated that the MENA countries have an acceptable status of infrastructure and habitat, tolerable health and ecosystem statuses, and inappropriate water and food conditions. Water shortage is also a serious problem in this region, to the extent that it is often assumed that water shortage is the root cause of all other types of vulnerability in MENA. However, the obtained results do not support this assumption. These findings provide insight about the adaptation challenges that should be faced and the choices that should be made in response to climate change, in MENA.
Highlights
Climate change is a widely accepted reality
Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries had identified by poor food and water resources and inadequate capacity of adaptation
In order to understand the impacts of climate change, the MENA countries were classified into four clusters
Summary
The change of climate is expected to confront the globe with numerous challenges, such as global warming. Global warming, which has serious economic consequences for societies, is one of the most serious challenges the world has faced due to climate change [1]. Acidification of oceans and the potential extinction risk of some plant and animal species are the other challenges [2]. With respect to these challenges, climate change is expected to cause significant impacts on the water resources of the arid and semi-arid regions of the world [3]. Vulnerability to climate change stands for susceptibility of a system to the adverse impacts of climate change and is related to the sensitivity of the human and natural system to the climate exposure and capacity of the system to adapt [7,8]
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