Countries across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) are contending with rising temperatures, water scarcity, and extreme weather events that impact ecosystems and livelihoods unevenly across geographic and socioeconomic contexts. In response, the governments of Egypt, Morocco, and Jordan have adopted long-term policy frameworks that emphasize mitigation, adaptation, and sustainable development. This piece explores how civil society actors operate within and around state climate policies, attending to the political and spatial conditions that shape the policies’ visibility, legitimacy, and impact.
Focusing on Egypt, Morocco, and Jordan, climate governance is examined through the tensions between centralized policy frameworks and locally differentiated realities. National strategies, such as Egypt’s National Climate Change Strategy 2050, Morocco’s Adaptation Plan 2030, and Jordan’s long-term climate policy, position climate action within global commitments, yet often overlook uneven vulnerabilities across urban and rural contexts.
Across major cities such as Cairo, Rabat, and Amman, climate engagement tends to take the form of organized initiatives led by NGOs, youth groups, and advocacy networks. In contrast, rural and peripheral areas experience climate change through more immediate struggles over water scarcity, land degradation, and livelihoods, where responses are often embedded in everyday practices or localized protest.
These differences reveal how climate policy is not only a technical or environmental framework but also a political and spatial process shaped by governance structures, resource distribution, and access to public space. While official narratives emphasize inclusivity and long-term resilience, implementation frequently reflects existing inequalities, limiting the reach and effectiveness of adaptation strategies.
By tracing the interaction between state-led policies and civil society action, the analysis highlights how climate responses are negotiated across scales, from formal institutional arenas to informal and community-based practices. The uneven articulation of climate action across urban and rural settings ultimately underscores the need to situate policy within lived conditions, where questions of visibility, participation, and legitimacy remain central to shaping meaningful and equitable climate futures.
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Amir Gohar, PhD. FHEA. AMLI. 