Public perceptions of environmental degradation in the Arab World: evidence from surveys about water, air, and sanitation

ABSTRACT

Many Arab countries are struggling to combat a range of environmental problems from air pollution to water salinization to overflowing garbage. Yet little is known about how people in this region perceive these environmental problems and the factors that influence their perceptions. This article analyzes surveys conducted by the Arab Barometer with 13,850 people across 12 Arab countries in 2018–19. The focus is on public perceptions about water pollution, air pollution, and trash. About 91% of respondents said that water pollution is a very serious or serious problem. About 89% and 73% feel the same way about trash and air pollution, respectively. Perceptions about environmental quality are mainly shaped by a person’s age, educational background, financial status, and how they view the current economic situation. Although perceptions about water and trash are directly connected to a national environmental quality measure, they are unconnected to specific measurements of clean water access and sanitation quality. Furthermore, perceptions about air quality are unconnected to any general or specific (national- or local-level) measurements. Instead, a person’s age, gender, educational background, financial status, and minority status are better predictors of how much they view air quality to be a problem. These findings shed light on the topic of environmental concern in a comparatively understudied area of the world, highlighting the ways that individual, local, and national factors shape how the average person evaluates environmental problems.

KEYWORDS:

• Environment
• pollution
• Arab world
• public
• surveys

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The term ‘Arab World’ refers to the 22 Arab countries located in the Greater Middle East and North African regions: Algeria, Bahrain, the Comoros Islands, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Mauritania, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen.

2. Studies of environmental attitudes in Middle Eastern countries that use qualitative, ethnographic, or case study approaches can be found in Croitoru et al. (2010); Jones (2010); Davis and Burke (2011); and Sowers (2013).

3. Dunlap et al. (1993), p. 10. Note that Turkey was the only Middle Eastern country surveyed in this study.

4. For instance, refer to the survey by the AFED (2017), which uses online convenience sampling methods.

5. It is expected that online surveys with probability-based designs will soon be marshaled to generate insights into the environmental attitudes across the Middle East and North Africa. Online surveys are already widely employed in the study of political behavior in the United States (Ansolabehere and Schaffner 2018), and this choice of survey mode only increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Arab Barometer project, too, was affected by the pandemic and pivoted to a telephone-based survey for its sixth wave. Unfortunately, questions about the environment were omitted from this wave, leaving the fifth wave a uniquely valuable source of survey data.

6. Note that Kuwait appears in the sample only on questions about air quality. Kuwaitis were not asked about water quality or sanitation.

7. See the discussion on measurement in Dunlap and Emmet Jones (2002), p. 515.

8. On the issue of use goods versus non-use goods in the context of the environment see Gokşen et al. (2002); National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (2005).

9. Other possible options were ‘Don’t Know’ and ‘Refused to Answer.’ If one of these options was selected the respondent is omitted in the sample of analysis.

10. Governorates are subnational population units designated and used during the sampling process by the Arab Barometer. Governorates sometimes, but not always, coincide with a country’s provinces or states, but not all countries have the same decentralized political structure. The number of governorates in each country is the following: Algeria (36), Egypt (24), Iraq (16), Jordan (12), Kuwait (6), Lebanon (8), Libya (21), Morocco (12), Palestine (17), Sudan (16), Tunisia (24), and Yemen (21).

11. Respondents select one of the following options: (1) ‘Our net household income does not cover our expenses; we face significant difficulties’; (2) ‘Our net household income does not cover our expenses; we face some difficulties’. (3) ‘Our net household income covers our expenses without notable difficulties’; (4) ‘Our net household income covers our expenses and we are able to save’.

12. Only 2020 data are available and there are missing observations for Libya, Palestine, and Yemen.

13. This is calculated by raising the value of the odds ratio (1.067) to the power of 5, which is the number of units in the Education variable that separates a person with a college degree from a person with no formal education. Note that this uses the Column 1 findings where Environmental Performance is included in the model, which omits Palestine due to missing data. The second column reports the results when Environmental Performance is taken out, which allows for the inclusion of Palestine in the sample. In this case, the odds ratio for Education is slightly lower and suggests a 31% higher odds for college-educated Arabs versus those without formal education.

14. This is not to suggest that environmental racism and related dynamics do not occur in the Arab World. For instance, refer to Jones (2010) on Saudi Arabia.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nimah Mazaheri

Nimah Mazaheri is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Tufts University. His current research focuses on the political economy of energy and the environment in the Middle East. His most recent book is Hydrocarbon Citizens: How Oil Transformed People and Politics in the Middle East (Oxford University Press, 2022).