Reframing the Just Transition in the Arab Region: Food, Water, and the Foundations of Stability with Lessons from Lebanon

Just transition’ has become a global catchphrase in recent times, often framed as an orderly shift, which involves phasing down fossil fuels, scaling up renewables, and cushioning affected workers through social protection. In other words, it is about “just energy transition” to reduce emissions and mitigate the negative impacts of climate change through a cascading process. However, this narrative of a just transition is conceived for economies where public services function effectively, energy access is reliable, and climate policy is pursued primarily through electricity prices and labour-market adjustments. In the Arab region, the framing of what constitutes “a just energy/climate transition” misses the reality. While access to reliant infrastructure and public services varies across countries due to different levels of socio-economic development, the brunt of climate impacts is unequivocally felt throughout the region.

A just transition must therefore contend not only with decarbonisation, but with dry taps, food-price shocks and, in several countries, systemic service breakdown under fiscal stress and institutional fragility. In a region that contributes relatively little to global emissions yet bears a disproportionate share of climate impacts,a climate policy will either stabilise societies or deepen inequality, inflation, and unrest. This article reframes the just transition as a macro-stability strategy anchored in food–water systems rather than a narrow energysector adjustment.

In such contexts, justice cannot be reduced to compensating displaced fossil fuel workers or offsetting higher electricity tariffs. For large segments of the population, particularly in least developed and conflict-affected Arab countries, the deeper injustice lies in the erosion of basic services themselves, reliable electricity, safe water, affordable food, and well-functioning public institutions. A just transition is therefore inseparable from social stabilisation, infrastructural service restoration, and economic survival. It is not about managing sectoral shifts within a working economy, but about rebuilding the foundations on which any credible low-carbon pathway must rest.

The Arab Region at the Epicentre of Climate–Water–Food Nexus

The Arab region sits at the epicentre of a converging climate–water–food crisis. Regional climate modelling under the ESCWA-led RICCAR platform projects warming of 1.2–2.6°C by mid-century, rising beyond 4°C by the end of the century, a warming way above the global average projected to increase between 2.7 to 4.4 degrees in the moderate to worst case scenario (Assessment Report 6 of the IPCC 2021 – 2023). Rainfall and mean runoff are expected to decline sharply to approximately 40 percent relative to the 1980–2010 period in Mediterranean coastal zones, where agriculture has traditionally flourished in the Maghreb and Mashreq.^[1]

Water scarcity is no longer cyclical but structural. Renewable water availability averages about 609 m³ per capita annually, roughly one-tenth of the global average, and is projected to fall by more than 50 percent by 2050. Agriculture accounts for 85–90 percent of freshwater withdrawals across the region, meaning that hydrological shocks translate directly into food inflation, fiscal stress, and rising import dependence.

FAO and the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) projections point to rain-fed cereal yield losses of 15–30 percent by mid-century in large parts of the Maghreb and Mashreq. Declining soil moisture, rising irrigation demand and accelerated groundwater depletion are tightening the water–food constraint precisely as fiscal space for adaptation is shrinking. Water governance has therefore become a central determinant of food security, macro-economic stability, and social stability across the Arab region.

Just Transition Through a Sustainable WEF Transition

Globally, agrifood systems account for 22–33 percent of greenhouse gas emissions^[2]. As mitigation gains relative momentum in the energy and transport sectors, policy attention is shifting rapidly toward agriculture. This is a welcome climate action, as Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use (AFOLU) generates roughly one-fifth of global emissions and offers major mitigation potential.^[3] Yet FAO and ICARDA research show that many low-emission farming practices would also reduce yields or raise production costs, especially for small farmers.^[4]

In Arab countries, where 50 to 90 percent of food consumption is imported, this creates a real risk: climate mitigation pathways that lower output or increase costs can deepen food inflation, push farmers out of production, and further strain already fragile societies. Practices such as limiting fertiliser use, restricting irrigation pumping, reducing livestock densities, or shifting to less input-intensive crop systems can, in water-stressed and low-income contexts, reduce effective farm-level returns, particularly among smallholders already operating near subsistence margins. This is why a just transition in the region cannot be framed through energy alone. It must be embedded in a water–energy–food–social protection (WEF-SP) nexus, where irrigation efficiency, groundwater governance, energy pricing, cold-chain infrastructure, and targeted social transfers are treated as components of a macro-stability strategy rather than sectoral policies in silos.

The Case of Lebanon

Lebanon offers a revealing stress-test case for reframing the just transition in the Arab region. More than 80 percent of its food is imported.^[5] Agriculture absorbs around 60 percent of national water withdrawals, much of it from weakly regulated and increasingly depleted groundwater. Between 2020 and 2022, 36.5 percent of the population experienced moderate to severe food insecurity, a figure that has since worsened, fuelled by currency collapse, subsidy removal, rising import bills, and recurrent climatic shocks. This combination of fiscal fragility, resource stress, and exposure to global food and energy markets makes Lebanon an early-warning laboratory for the distributional, macro-economic, and food-system risks that climate transitions are beginning to generate across the wider Arab region.

Against this backdrop, Lebanon has articulated a commendable integrated response through its Food System Transformation (FST) Pathway, developed with FAO, World Food Programme (WFP), UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), American University of Beirut (AUB), and national stakeholders.^[6] The Pathway explicitly reframes food systems as national stabilisation infrastructure rather than a narrow agricultural agenda. It integrates water governance reform, irrigation modernisation, sustainable access to on-farm renewable energy, ecosystem restoration, nutrition-sensitive social protection, and legal reform under a proposed Right-to-Food framework law, anchoring access to food, water and clean energy as enforceable public obligations.

Importantly, parts of the pathway have moved beyond concept into early implementation. These include irrigation-efficiency pilots, water accounting and governance reforms, nutritionlinked social protection measures, and targeted agricultural support programmes aligned with climate-resilient practices. Yet, at the same time, core elements, such as large-scale aquifer governance reform, irrigation modernisation, and sustainable financing mechanisms, remain largely aspirational.

Years of neglected infrastructure, fragmented institutions, and weak regulatory enforcement, compounded by political paralysis and the absence of a unified national development vision, continue to constrain scale-up. These constraints are further reinforced by the political economy of recovery: IMF^[7] programmes and donors require far-reaching structural reforms before financing reconstruction, delaying large-scale investment in food, water, and climateresilient infrastructure.

Lessons Learnt from Lebanon’s Pathway

Lebanon’s pathway demonstrates that in fragile, food-import-dependent states, food systems must be treated as macroeconomic stabilisation infrastructure rather than social policy addons. It shows the necessity of embedding climate action within water, food, energy and social protection systems; anchoring reform in legal and institutional frameworks rather than short-term projects; and explicitly addressing the political economy of reform, financing, and conditionality.

The proposed Right-to-Food framework law is particularly significant. Beyond its normative value, it would reshape budget priorities, influence subsidy reform sequencing under IMF programmes, and redefine how international finance is allocated between mitigation, adaptation, and social protection, elevating food and water security from discretionary welfare spending to enforceable public obligations.

Lebanon illustrates that technical coherence alone does not deliver transformation. Even a well-designed pathway remains aspirational when public institutions lack coordination capacity, infrastructure is degraded, and large-scale financing is conditioned on politically contested reforms. This binding constraint is not unique to Lebanon; it reflects a structural regional reality affecting many Arab economies navigating reconstruction, debt consolidation and climate volatility simultaneously.

Many Arab states, including Jordan, Tunisia, Iraq, Yemen, and parts of the Maghreb, share Lebanon’s structural profile: high food-import dependence, declining water availability, fiscal compression, fragmented governance and growing climate volatility. Lebanon’s FST Pathway therefore offers a replicable prototype, not as a finished model, but as a governance and policy framework for aligning climate action with macro-economic stability and social resilience.

While Lebanon reflects the vulnerabilities of fragile and middle-income Arab economies, its experience also carries important lessons for the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states. Despite stronger fiscal positions and more advanced infrastructure, GCC countries face parallel structural exposures: extreme water scarcity, near-total dependence on food imports, and rising climate volatility. Lebanon’s pathway highlights that food and water security cannot be treated as peripheral sustainability agendas. Even in high-income settings, failure to integrate groundwater governance, irrigation efficiency, domestic production resilience, cold-chain infrastructure, and nutrition-sensitive social protection into national climate strategies risks deepening import dependence and increasing fiscal exposure to global food price shocks. For GCC states, the lesson is clear: long-term climate resilience will depend not only on decarbonising energy systems, but on treating food and water security as core components of national stability, sovereign risk management, and economic diversification strategies.

Therefore, policymakers in Lebanon as well as in the Arab region should consider the following dimensions to ensure that a just transition is on the right track:

1. Treat food systems as national stabilisation infrastructure, central to fiscal planning, food-price management and social cohesion, rather than as peripheral agricultural or welfare sectors.
2. Build transformation through governance processes, not only projects, by embedding food–water–climate coordination within durable national institutions and cross-sector planning frameworks.
3. Use rights-based and legal frameworks to ensure that food and water security remain binding public obligations rather than discretionary social expenditures.
4. Address implementation bottlenecks at the outset of any planning process, particularly the interaction between institutional capacity, financing constraints and policy conditionality, and design transition pathways that are sequenced realistically within these constraints.

Finally, a just transition in the Arab region should start with food and water security, not end with it. Climate action cannot be reduced to emissions pathways; it must be anchored in macro-economic management, social protection systems, and governance reform. Indeed, food systems shape inflation, fiscal exposure, household vulnerability, and political stability. Climate justice will therefore be judged not only in terms of carbon outcomes, but in whether countries can protect access to food, water, energy, and livelihoods as climate shocks intensify. This is the practical test of the just transition for the region.

Endnotes

^[1] Enrique Doblas-Miranda et al., Climate and Environmental Change in the Mediterranean Basin (MedECC, 2020).

^[2] FAO, “Global Food Systems and Climate Change,” Food and Agriculture Organization, 2021.

^[3] IPCC, Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2022, https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg2/.

^[4] CGIAR, A Just Energy Transition in the Agrifood System, What Does It Entail? A proposal for the COP29 Presidency, 2024.

^[5] Maha Hoteit et al., “Exploring the Impact of Crisis on Food Security in Lebanon: Results from a Cross-Sectional Study,” MDPI, August 2021, https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/16/8753.

^[6] Government of Lebanon, “Building Back Better: The Recovery of a Fragile Food System – Lebanon National Food Systems Transformation Pathway,” March 2024.

^[7] “Restoring Lebanon’s Economic Growth Will Require Comprehensive Reforms, the International Monetary Fund Says,” Reuters, February 2026.