Brussels: Europe and the Arabs

The latest report issued by the European Council on Foreign Relations and distributed in Brussels said:

The process of de-escalation between Iran and Gulf Arab states is fragile and could collapse if efforts to revive the Iran nuclear deal fail.
A platform for dialogue on climate and environmental security may be one of the few politically feasible ways to strengthen and sustain diplomatic channels between Iran and Gulf monarchies.
The Middle East is very exposed to climate change and faces challenges including water scarcity, air pollution and sandstorms, rising temperatures, and extreme weather events.
Europeans should proactively support a regional platform to address climate issues as a means of advancing their interests in de-escalation, asserting their influence in an increasingly multipolar region, and fulfilling climate and environmental security commitments.
European initiatives should highlight the merits of regional cooperation, focusing on diplomacy, joint scientific research, capacity building, and strategic investment.
The Middle East is one of the regions of the world most exposed to climate change and desertification. The urgent challenges it faces include air pollution and sandstorms, temperatures in some areas that exceed a threshold for human adaptability, and extreme weather events. Water scarcity, long a grave concern, is worsening. Yet Middle Eastern countries are moving too slowly to address these common threats to their environmental and climate security – and have rarely cooperated with one another in these areas.
Until recently, Russia supplied 40 per cent of the European Union’s natural gas imports and 27 per cent of its oil imports. But their response to Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine left them scrambling for alternative providers, including Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states. The urgency of the situation prompted Europeans to refocus on hydrocarbons, denting their climate credentials. Therefore, they need to make substantive diplomatic efforts and investments in the energy transition, which would be particularly significant if directed towards GCC states as some of the world’s leading hydrocarbons producers.
As such concerns gradually become more relevant, ECFR visiting fellow Cinzia Bianco suggests in her latest policy brief that Europeans should encourage Middle Eastern policymakers to work together and should create and support a platform on which they could do so. This would advance Europeans’ climate agenda and signal their commitment to tackling climate change as a global problem, and it could also reinforce the trend towards de-escalation between Gulf Arab states and Iran, she writes.

Key recommendations are:
Facilitate environmental diplomacy: Europeans should work to reinforce regionally owned diplomatic processes that have developed in the past year, especially by linking disparate initiatives and prioritising consistency and the establishment of a coherent, sustainable, and practical dialogue.
Promote joint scientific research: Joint scientific research would be especially beneficial in areas such as air and water pollution, rain enhancement, desalination, and sandstorms. Research into problems and solutions in these areas may be politically more effective in the region if it is conducted by Middle Eastern states rather than countries further afield.
Pursue opportunities for strategic investment and capacity building: Europeans have a clear interest in supporting the green transition in GCC states, Iraq, and Iran. In many ways, this will require the active involvement of the European private sector and even seed funding from the EU. In line with the European Green Deal and the Joint Communication, the EU should organise a Green Business Forum that brings together private sector representatives from both Europe and the Gulf.
Middle Eastern states’ efforts at de-escalation will continue to be fragile for so long as they are unable to have difficult conversations with one another about their geopolitical and security concerns. In this environment, a platform for dialogue on climate and environmental security may be one of the few politically feasible ways to strengthen and sustain channels for regional diplomacy.

Europeans are aware that it is in their interests to promote de-escalation between Iran and its Arab neighbours. This could strengthen the EU’s position in an increasingly multipolar region and help it fulfil its commitments to climate and environmental security.
The European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) is a pan-European think-tank that aims to conduct cutting-edge independent research in pursuit of a coherent, effective, and values-based European foreign policy. With a network of offices in seven European capitals, over 80 staff from more than 25 different countries and a team of associated researchers in the EU 27 member states, ECFR is uniquely placed to provide pan-European perspectives on the biggest strategic challenges and choices confronting Europeans today