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Partners of the FEMRC included regional institutions in ten cities: Alexandria, Amman, Athens, Beirut, Kuwait City, Muscat, Nicosia, Rabat, Tangier, Tunis, Tehran.

The intention of this collaborative initiative was to identify basic commonalities within the environmental challenges - including the multiple impacts of climate change - faced by people living in the urban centers in the region of the Eastern Mediterranean, Middle East & North Africa.  In cities from Rabat, Morocco to Muscat, Oman, residents are dealing with frequent and life-threatening heatwaves, dwindling water supplies, and air-borne dust. In the project, each participating city was represented by comparative scientific data from numerical climate models for temperature and rainfall, plus air quality values, which help illustrate the growing pressures on these urban centers. The ongoing objective is to illustrate the need for a path towards creating an integrated regional adaptation strategy for cities of the future.

Gallery | Installation images from the exhibition space | DDP

Project features:
Historical maps of the 16th-18th century of the Eastern Mediterranean, Middle East & North Africa presented in the gallery space were courtesy of the Bank of Cyprus Cultural Foundation Collection. Alongside the project's scientific data, these regional maps gave visitors a chance to compare how the region was depicted within atlases, geography, travellers' and history books, and to see the variations in the names of towns and settlements, and how the land and its features were recorded in the past

ESSAY | Connecting Cities: Commonalities and Challenges

Today, this region is confronted with many interconnected challenges, such as increasingly over-exploited natural resources, rapid population growth and spreading urbanization and the multiple impacts of climate change. Commonalities and interactions between the increasing pressures on water supply, energy generation and food security have already caused unprecedented challenges for cities and communities of the region. The difficulties faced by people within their daily lives, both in urban centers and in rural areas, are often remarkably quite similar. Climate change and the effects of human intervention have also had an impact on environmental integrity and the health of regional ecosystems. From the wetlands of the Eastern Mediterranean to the Sahara Desert, the dangers of continued biodiversity loss and spreading desertification, often the result of degraded landscapes due to over-grazing or intensive farming, and the over- exploitation of water resources have had devastating impacts on ecological balances.

Various locations across the EM/MENA region are also undergoing drastic political and societal transitions, armed conflict and forced migration, which have pushed societal and environmental systems to critical thresholds that can no longer buffer more external shocks, such as extreme drought or new waves of refugees. As a result of these developments, many communities of the region now face a combination of extraordinary challenges to the future welfare of their environments, livelihoods, human health and even their cultures. The need for adaptation strategies that are both appropriate and regionally applicable is paramount in order to be able to assure the future availability of water, food and energy to all peoples across this region.

The anticipated impacts of changing weather patterns and climatic conditions are expected to have particularly strong manifestations in urban settings, and to increase in severity over time; thus, climate change introduces exceptional demands on the cities of this region. This project intends to provide insights into current and future conditions by presenting an overview of the adaptive challenges of climate change in the urban context of the EM/MENA area. Each participating city will be represented by basic statistical and demographic data, which corresponds to these urban challenges. Additionally, comparative data from numerical climate models of the region—for example, temperature, rainfall and air quality—will help illustrate how the growing pressures of extreme conditions, such as hotter and drier summers, will be most intensely felt within urban centers.

The larger purpose of this regional initiative is to set in motion an effort to connect the adaptation strategies being developed by major regional institutions with solutions for common problems. As most cities face increased urbanization and population movements toward urban centers, climate change adaptation must now be considered a necessary part of every city’s urban planning processes. This applies not only to impacts, but also to larger climate resilience strategies to reduce risk and vulnerability. City living conditions and human interaction with the built environment must be addressed. Factors that affect the realities of everyday life, such as enhanced urban warming and deteriorating air quality with resultant adverse health effects for city inhabitants, must be incorporated into effective mitigation and adaptation strategies for the projected extremes of the future.

The long-term objective of this ongoing EM/MENA Project is to connect the knowledge of key regional institutions through an exchange not only between countries, but also with individuals and communities engaged in innovative methods and creative nature-based regenerative solutions “on the ground.” The reality is that this region and our contemporary way of life, just like other areas of the world, has already passed its tipping point and is producing negative effects and unwanted alterations to our urban and natural environments. The merging of these two fields of knowledge, the mainstreaming of transformative adaptation into all sectors of society, may assist in the creation of better co-developed and integrated solutions for the future, so that we might be able to ensure resilience for the region’s water sources, energy production and food security in the 21st century.

Future Earth is a major international research platform with Central Hubs and Regional Centers across the globe. It aims to provide the knowledge and support to accelerate transformations to a sustainable world, including scientific projects that work across the natural and social sciences on critical global change and sustainability issues. The Future Earth MENA Regional Center (FEMRC) serves countries in the Eastern Mediterranean, the Middle East and North Africa, and enables initiatives that cater to the specific characteristics of the region and its pressing environmental and societal challenges. Its goal is to foster regionally-coordinated research and the implementation of strategies that develop sustainable lifestyles and economies.

Contributing Regional Institutions:

Relevant Links:

• Seoul Biennale Official Website | "Commoning Cities" Exhibition | EM/MENA REGIONAL CENTERS

• FUTURE EARTH Official Website | Participation in the Seoul Biennale of Architecture & Urbanism

• FUTURE EARTH Official Blog | Photo slideshow: Coping with Climate Change in the Middle East and North Africa

Installation images courtesy of Seung Kim, Georgios Artopoulos, Melina Nicolaides, Manfred Lange.