This chapter discusses the concept of environmental security and how the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region fits into the broader theoretical debate both by embracing popular arguments such as environmentally induced conflicts and environmental threats to national security, and by problematizing the normative implications and orientalist legacy of the securitizing and developmentalist approach to the environment. Starting from the assumption that the MENA region is an emblematic case of contested approaches to environmental security, the chapter also explores how differently it is articulated in policy terms, especially in its over-emphasis on top-down green transitions. Based on international surveys, it then looks at what the environmental priorities are for Arab citizens and how they stand in relation to other pressing concerns. By positing the importance of framing the environment as another arena for negotiation and renegotiation of faltering social contracts that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to disconnect from closely interrelated issues of social justice, marginalization, regime legitimacy, and forms of knowledge production, the chapter lastly reflects on the complex physiognomy of environmental activism regionwide.
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