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caused by climate change, resulting in a growing emigration pressure:
‘The combination of increasing droughts and water shortages along with
high birth-rates, poor agricultural potentials and underdeveloped politi-
cal problem-solving abilities increase the potential for political crisis and
migration pressure’ (WBGU 2007: 3).
Even if migration due to environmental factors largely occurs only within
the respective country and contributes above all to an increase in the ten-
dency toward greater urbanisation, it is clear that these sprawling urban
conglomerations can effectively absorb only a very limited number of these
migrants; this, in turn, will lead to their becoming merely ‘stopovers’ in the
transcontinental migration chain, f irst and foremost directed towards Europe.
The reports issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC), the UN Environmental Program (UNEP) and a number of other
international organisations no longer allow the environmentally triggered
migration from North Africa to be ignored. A number of studies have also
emphasised the security policy dimension evident in environmental crises
(see Brauch, Liotta, Marquina, Rogers & El-Sayed Selim 2003). The so-called
Stern Review even foresees severe slumps in the world economy within the
next few decades as a result of climate change. These economic slumps
will hit ecologically vulnerable regions, including the MENA region, the
hardest (Stern 2007).
6.5 Hotspots of regional conf lict and migration
The uncertainty of the prognoses of migration potential in the MENA
region, particularly in its most conf lict-laden area of the Middle East (which
is surrounded by many hardly-less-conf lict-laden countries such as Iraq,
Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan!), is linked to a number of speculative
scenarios concerning security policy. Two conf licts in particular could
have considerable impact on the intra- and interregional migration, with
the latter being directed towards Europe.
6.5.1 The disintegration of Iraq?
While the US and its allies in the ‘Coalition of the Willing’ were able to
topple the Baath regime relatively quickly and thus achieve their declared
primary goal in the Iraq war, which could hardly mask their underlying more
important goals of securing access to major oil resources and hegemonic
inf luence in the entire Gulf region, they did not succeed in democratising