In November 2021, Jordan, Israel, and the U.A.E. agreed to a project according to which the Emirati would finance the construction of a huge solar power plant in Jordan that would generate cheap electricity for Israel. In turn, Israel would build a desalination plant on the Mediterranean and send water to an increasingly parched Jordan. Saudi Arabia tried to pressure the U.A.E. into scrapping the deal because the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, the U.A.E.’s more powerful neighbor, wanted himself to be seen as the region’s dominant player in green energy deals, not the U.A.E. and Jordan. Moreover, the terms of the agreement did not win the approval of Jordanian people who gathered in Amman (the Jordanian capital) to protest a water-for-energy agreement saying it moved toward normalizing ties with Israel while the latter continues to occupy the Palestinian territories. Opponents of the agreement also warned that the deal would force Jordan to be dependent on its neighbor.
This is a clear example of political rivalries in the Middle East-some long-lasting (Arab-Israeli conflict) and others more recent (Saudi-Emirati)- overriding the efforts of regional environmental activists to cope with the challenges of climate change. Discuss how the ongoing conflicts (domestic and inter-state), the regional power hierarchies, and the tradition of authoritarian rule in the Middle East undermine the efforts to manage temperature rise in the region that is already heating twice as fast as the global average and that by the end of this century may become uninhabitable. In your view, could the political conditions in the Middle East change if the region make a rapid transition from economic growth based on fossil-fuel production to the one driven by production of solar energy? Explain.