Building the New Jerusalem of the twenty-first century

The past six years have initiated an extraordinary period in history when slowly developing constraint on growth - the availability of land and water resources - shocked those responsible for food security. A global credit crunch swamped economies across the world, leaving billions of people poorer and some states near to bankruptcy.

Until the last sip: the Middle Eastern water question. Photo Credit: Nicholas Clive Marcroft

One of the worst-hit regions has been the Middle East, where numerous attempts have been made to analyse the origins of what is called the “Arab Spring”. However, in the midst of state crises, the environment has always been left out of the analysis. Yet, it is the environment that indeed matters over the coming years. In the long run, our economies are wholly owned subsidiaries of the environment. Our economies will be sustainable provided we do not over-allocate our natural resources.

Since the end of 2010 the revolutions of the young and hopeful have caused several dictatorships in the region to be toppled by the demands of the masses on the streets. The regional pivot, Cairo, the “mother of all cities”, is experiencing mass protests on a daily basis. One prominent three word slogan of the masses on the streets of Cairo is Aeesh, horeya, aadala igtmaaya (Bread, freedom, social equality). The old regime failed to deliver these fundamentals because it had installed a  “de-natured economy”. However, to satisfy the legitimate calls of the masses, we shall need a New (environmental and social) Jerusalem.

De-natured politics

In Timothy Mitchell’s seminal study “Carbon Democracies”, he offers an account of the history of oil politics and how politicians, economists, geologists and businessmen in the course of the twentieth century shaped the subsequent “de-natured” economy to build the New Jerusalem of the post-war era based on carbon. This environmentally blind cornucopian “brown” economy has had dangerous and very hard to reverse consequences.

Recognition of the legacy of being environmentally blind comes at an inconvenient time for most Middle Eastern economies. Faced by high population growth and increasing water and food insecurity, the perfect storm may well inflate to gale force 12. In the old days, the missing water resources could be replaced by readily available food imports with embedded water from water rich regions.

The new challenges require a Kuhnian paradigm change in both decision-making circles and wider society. The old politics were flamboyantly de-natured.

The political classes and societies of the Middle East and North Africa must recognize that they have to enable their farmers to be both good stewards of water and land resources as well as effective producers of food.

A telling example of the old de-natured politics in the Middle East was the Syrian regime’s over-confident decision to sell most of its emergency wheat reserves in 2005 at a time of increasing global wheat prices just before the onset of climate change-inflicted droughts in the years before 2011. The subsequent migration of farmers to cities set off a dynamic within Syria that some have attributed to growing (and brutally suppressed) social unrest eventually leading to the violent civil war that has left 70,000 Syrians dead. The ignorance of the political  classes and society of the role of nature also contributed to social unrest in both Egypt and Tunisia where food prices marked one trigger of the growing discontent with the rulers on the part of the ruled.

The venal neglect of nature led Middle Eastern rulers to attempt to lease extensive tracts in Africa to meet future food needs opened by climate change in the MENA region with flows of food in supply chains over which they have more control. In his new book Eckart Woertz gives a compelling account of why this strategy was pursued and why it has quickly failed. Again, he reveals the de-naturalisation of politics and the lack of understanding of the environment. The understanding was especially poor concerning the power relations in the global water-food-trade nexus upon which this water scarce region depends.

The strategy to tackle water and food insecurity was based on notions of the past “carbon” age, treating water and food as if they were the same as gas and oil. Based on old economic thinking, this strategy emphasized the Ricardian ideas of comparative advantage without taking the environmental, social, economic and political complexities of agricultural systems into account.

Land grabbing has failed, which is certainly good news as it is the epitome of “de-natured” economic decision-making.

Thinking outside the neo-liberal box

However, the deeper message of the outcomes of the recent wave of investment in water and land is the need for a complete re-evaluation of our economic philosophy. The old neoliberal ideas of the carbon age have reached their last breath. It is time to think outside the neo-liberal box. An often belittled, yet potentially very useful, approach to socio-economic development is the so-called ‘broad movement of heterodox economics’ that looks beyond the dangerously misleading rationality of economic equilibrium.

The neo-liberal approach is especially dangerous if the “sleeping giant” in the global political economy - namely agriculture - is awakened. New understandings must be included if Malthusian scenarios are to be avoided. After all, only Sub-Sahara Africa can meet the essential additional food supply required in MENA economies exposed to climate change and population growth.

There are two key ideas that must be incorporated in policies that seek to secure access to food and safely manage natural and institutional environments to meet rising food demands.  Additional food supplies can only be securely obtained by first, placing green economic ideas such as agent-based modeling and resource accounting at the heart of policy to secure the livelihoods of smallholders and the protection of the environment in potential food bowls in Sub-Sahara Africa. Secondly, there must be recognition of the key roles of financial investment expertise and of agronomic and management skills in establishing the productive use and sound stewardship of water and land resources in regions of climatic and market uncertainty.

Growing water and food insecurity is inherently man-made. It has arisen as a consequence of the de-natured political-economic decisions inspired by the unsustainable approaches of the age of carbon. The new age of uncertainty poses significant challenges to those who manage Middle Eastern economies and those of the whole world. These new directions can only be fulfilled with a paradigm shift in approach that properly privileges value of nature, the essential role of justice and the importance of making and taking opportunities to effectively steward water and land resources. We should listen to the masses on the streets of Cairo because the successful promise of the New Jerusalem of the 21^st century will depend on bread, freedom and social justice and a U-turn to the economy of nature.