Climate change and security in North Africa - Focus on Algeria, Morocco

The transmission of transboundary, cascading, climate risks are central in the key objective of CASCADES, which aims to contribute to the understanding of the cascading impacts of climate change across trade, foreign policy and security, trade and finance, and what this means for European policy (coherence) when addressing climate change adaptation.5 4 See Figure 2 in Hilden et al. [...] Moreover, the sector is a key employer in some of the countries, employing almost 35 and 13 percent of the population in Morocco and Tunisia respectively and 9,9 percent of the population in Algeria (FAO 2020, and WB data, see graph 2). [...] As a result, rural impoverishment and rural flight were seen as a factor contributing to urban unrest and protests, which, in the case of Tunisia started in disadvantaged rural towns, and not in the major urban agglomerations.9 According to Lazard (2020), the environmental factors of the Arab Revolts have remained largely under-examined. [...] The energy sector has been marked by inefficiencies and scandals in the state-owned energy company Sonatrach, seen as the scene of a power struggle between the government and ministry officials and the intelligence services. [...] 26 Climate change and security in North Africa Low political participation, regional inequalities and abuse of centralised power, and the resulting deficits in public institutions’ efficiency and accountability, were major triggers of the 2011 uprisings across the region (Houdret and Harnisch 2019).