Is it possible to think about the security challenges in the Middle East outside immediate, visceral threats from violent conflict, terrorism, and sectarianism? To what extent are wider dynamics of societal transformation and environmental change in play, and how do these interact with, and potentially intensify, current sources of instability and insecurity? Ashok Swain and Anders Jägerskog combine a scholarly and practitioner interest in alternative security approaches applied to the region. Emblematic of Scandinavian approaches to conflict analysis and resolution, they declare that “the security challenges in the region are too integrated and too complex in order to be understood in traditional ways” (p. 164). This systematic, incisive volume provides a comprehensive survey of the role of environmental resources—water, land, and fossil fuels—as they combine with demographic changes to shape regional security threats. Climate change projections for the region are seen as likely exacerbating strains on water, land availability, and conditions of life for rapidly growing populations already subject, in several countries, to conflict-induced displacement. Indeed, for Middle Eastern countries receiving large-scale forced and voluntary population migration, these demographic changes are a greater source of stress on water and food availability than climate change.

Conceptually the book advances an inclusive security approach, which moves beyond state-centered accounts to include people (individually or collectively) as a security-referent, thereby opening up analysis to multilevel security patterns and processes outside the military domain. The closest theoretical affinity is to the so-called Copenhagen School of security studies, which applies a constructivist lens to examine the discursive means by which issues are securitized—that is, they are framed as an existential threat and serve as a justification for exceptional policy action. Swain and Jägerskog relax the semantic threshold by which security issues are identified by the Copenhagen School, arguing that emerging threats may not appear in the first instance as existential threats, but rather as growing vulnerabilities that may, if not effectively addressed, become existential threats (p. 155). At the same time they follow the Copenhagen School understanding of the Middle East as a regional security complex dominated by visible conflicts (Arab–Israeli conflict, Iraq and Syrian wars) and latent conflicts (e.g., Sunni–Shiʿa divide). From this regional security perspective, the failed political transitions wrought by the Arab Spring are claimed to have created conditions for the rise of ISIS and other violent Islamist groupings (p. 24). Authoritarian Arab states unable to meet growing economic and development needs struggle to maintain political legitimacy and continue to stoke grievances from marginalized groups.

The most important, original contribution of the book is its focus on a food, water, and energy nexus as partly determined by climate projections for the Middle East: climate change is becoming securitized through perceived impacts on water and arable land, as well as the energy security implications of international regulatory moves to curb fossil fuel use. For a book subtitled “The Impact of Climate Change and Globalization,” there could be greater discussion of the geopolitics of climate change in the Middle East, including the role of the Arab League and the Gulf states in shaping regional discourses on climate change mitigation and adaptation. Nevertheless, a welcome feature of the account by Swain and Jägerskog is the nuanced analysis of climate change, correcting some of the more excitable “climate determinism” attributing current conflicts to climate impacts (e.g., in Syria) or forecasting future wars in the Middle East on account of growing water scarcity. As the authors note, there are significant uncertainties over local climatic effects. And while most scientific projections suggest that the region will experience a significant decrease in rainfall and higher average temperatures, resulting in generally reduced water availability, there is no plausible evidence that this will be a direct trigger of conflict. Middle Eastern countries and peoples exhibit different vulnerabilities in the face of climate variability and change, and the book considers governance priorities often at odds with these environmental pressures.

Numerous instances of ecologically and economically irrational decision making are informed by the widespread policy narrative of food self-sufficiency despite the region being reliant on food imports since the 1970s. Swain and Jägerskog correctly pinpoint high population growth and declining levels of land and water availability as structural drivers of food insecurity in the Middle East. Arab states have accelerated the depletion of domestic (and transboundary) water resources to boost agricultural production, offering subsidies on water and on the energy needed to pump water for irrigation. Perhaps the most remarkable case, cited by the authors, is the use of fossil water in Saudi Arabia since the late 1970s to grow wheat for export: these aquifer supplies are now virtually exhausted. There are also infrastructure projects, such as strategic investments in desalination and the Red Sea–Dead Sea Conveyance Project, seeking supply-side solutions to declining per capita water availability. With their greater economic wealth, Gulf countries—including Saudi Arabia—have also recently made overseas investments in land and agricultural outputs to reduce risks of future food shortages, thereby importing more “virtual water” as a response to domestic water deficits.

Subsidies on water, food, and energy are props for regime legitimacy in the absence of democratic will-formation, but are throwing up fiscal challenges even for the Gulf countries. Modest regional investments in renewable energy are less a climate change mitigation measure and more an attempt, for fossil fuel exporting countries, to increase earnings from external oil and gas sales by reducing the role of these energy sources in domestic consumption: 97 percent of regional electricity is generated from fossil fuels. Swain and Jägerskog identify major geopolitical and geoeconomic challenges arising from the discovery and growing extraction of major natural gas reserves in the eastern Mediterranean. Natural gas generally has a lower life cycle global warming potential than coal and oil, but any climate change benefits may, the authors claim, be overwhelmed by the increasing demand for electricity (from population growth) and lower energy prices.

Given the environmental vulnerabilities addressed in the book, the authors foresee efficient (and I would add “equitable”) management of natural resources as providing conditions for stable and sustainable peace. In part, this is a matter of shared threats fostering information sharing and trust building: “The serious threat of climate change makes a strong case for increasing regional cooperation in the environment and development sectors” (p. 177). And there is an expectation that this could generate positive spillovers in addressing other security threats, although this may seem disconnected from the bloody violence and barbarism gripping much of the region. Yet Swain and Jägerskog are surely right to call, at least, for discussion of the contours of an integrated security approach, informed by a regional agenda promoting sustainable economic development and internal democratization. As they note, the realpolitik perspective underpinning the interventions of external actors—including the United States, European Union, and Russia—has so demonstrably failed the people of the region.