Article
Ilyssa Yahmi
Projects
The Climate Crisis, Resilience, and Displacement in the Middle East and North Africa
About the Project
Countries in the Middle East and North Africa are increasingly exposed to the accelerating impacts of climate change, from water scarcity and desertification to extreme heat and recurring droughts. These pressures are occurring amid governance failures, economic fragility, and conflict, creating new forms of vulnerability and displacement across the region. In many cases, migration has become a last-resort adaptation strategy for marginalized communities.
The project explores how climate change is reshaping mobility, governance, and resilience across seven Middle East and North African countries. Through field-based research, local partnerships, and policy engagement, it documents the lived experiences of the most vulnerable, analyzes governance gaps, and identifies bottom-up adaptation strategies. The overarching objective is to amplify the voices of marginalized communities most affected by climate pressures and integrating their lived experiences and adaptation practices into regional and policy debates.
Climate Pressures in Algeria: The Crisis in Rural Kabylie
Collection
The Convergence Trap: Climate, Governance, and Displacement in Vulnerable Communities Across the Middle East and North Africa
Climate stress interacts with economic fragility, governance failures, social marginalization, and conflict. This dynamic creates interlocking crises that reinforce one another in ways that diminish people’s options when it comes to adapting locally, moving safely, or remaining in place with dignity. From voluntary to forced migration, movement unfolds along a continuum. For some, it takes the form of fragmentation within the same geographic area, seasonal migration, or permanent relocation. For others, it produces the opposite condition: forced immobility. These communities are the most vulnerable. They find themselves trapped in deteriorating environments, cut off from public services, and excluded from policy responses. Climate impacts can therefore be central or marginal, dramatic or subtle. They can displace communities or trap them in immobility and push them down the socioeconomic ladder.
