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COP30: The cultural lens: how climate change reshapes security and identity in the Middle East

21 November 2025

International

Examining climate change through a socio-phycological and cultural lens reveals dimensions of insecurity that often remain invisible in traditional policy debates. Dr Amjed Rasheed’s research examines how climate change is transforming the security dynamics of the Middle East – affecting identity, heritage and political power, and disrupting not only ecosystems but also the cultural identities and ways of life that underpin community resilience across the region.

His forthcoming book with Cambridge University Press, Climate Stress and Indigenous Communities (2026), uses the experience of the Marsh Arabs of southern Iraq to illustrate this point:

The Marsh Arabs traditional way of life, intrinsically linked to the intricate wetland ecosystem… has been systematically undermined by a combination of deliberate state violence, natural drought, and rising global temperatures. These combined threats have led to an “existential threat” to their community, where the destruction of their environment signifies not merely a loss of physical space but also the collapse of their very security of being. As such, the book’s central argument suggests that for the Marsh Arabs, environmental destruction constitutes both a physical and a deep ontological crisis. This crisis, initiated by Saddam Hussein’s deliberate draining of the Mesopotamian marshes in the 1990s (A.I. Ahram, 2015) and exacerbated by contemporary climate change, has severed their everyday rituals and thus undermined their fundamental autobiographical continuity."– Dr Amjed Rasheed

This culturally grounded perspective also informs Dr Rasheed’s ongoing work on Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) as a form of climate resilience, the subject of a recent UK Research & Innovation (UKRI) funding bid with partners in the University of Mosul (Iraq) and LUISS University Rome (Italy). Here, he examines how oral traditions, poetry and Indigenous knowledge can function as coping mechanisms for communities facing intersecting pressures of displacement, conflict and environmental stress. The project reframes environmental security by placing cultural continuity – rather than just infrastructure or state capacity – at the centre of adaptation strategies.

Another thread of his research looks at how climate change is increasingly weaponised in fragile political contexts. Working with Lebanese American University and Philipps-Universität Marburg, Dr Rasheed is developing an ESRC application on the “de-weaponisation” of climate change in the Middle East and North Africa. The project investigates how drought, water scarcity and ecological degradation are leveraged by different actors to consolidate political or military advantage, and how community-led “de-weaponisation” can counter these dynamics and strengthen resilience across Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, southern Iraq and Tunisia.

Across these areas, a common theme emerges: climate change is affecting security not only through direct environmental, military and political pressures, but through its effects on the cultural foundations that underpin security – identity, heritage and community resilience. Dr Rasheed’s research highlights the need to understand the human meaning of climate change, which is both a material challenge and an identity-based disruption, especially in regions where communities are already navigating conflict and displacement.