SAGE-Centre: Sustainable Adaptation to Global Change in the Middle East

Dr Christiane Fröhlich co-leads the Team D: Governance and Ethics, which addresses the problem that adaptive policy-intervention methods and management methods are known, but not implemented. Key to addressing this implementation gap are attitudes, values, and institutions, which greatly affect how natural resources are governed. We study socio-economic and cultural differences as well as cross-country obstacles to good governance of climate change, with a particular focus on conflict and cooperation. We operate on the level of – maybe conflicting – ethical baselines for good governance of limited natural resources with a transdisciplinary approach. Recent research suggests, for instance, that a better understanding of national security discourses is key to effectively scoping the available space, time, and willingness to negotiate water issues under conflict, which in turn is crucial for future water diplomacy. Via a discourse and ethics analysis of qualitative data, we identify regional policymakers’ and stakeholders’ attitudes towards the basi(c)s of good governance facing climate change as well as normative reasons for their attitudes.

In two PhD projects within Team D: Governance and Ethics, Nada Majdalani is researching the use, abuse, and misuse of intangibles in contested water projects, and Sara Ashour analyses perceptions of risks and vulnerabilities. Sara Ashour is a doctoral researcher at the International Agricultural Trade and Development Group at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and is co-supervised by Dr Christiane Fröhlich. Her research focuses on trade facilitation policies and their effect on food security and climate adaptation efforts within the Jordan River Basin. She has policy experience of more than 13 years of working within various governmental and international organizations. Her topics of interest include trade integration, rules of origin, and trade facilitation. Nada Majdalani is a practitioner, researcher and consultant in the field of environmental assessment and management. She received her M.Sc. degree in Environmental Assessment and Management from Oxford Brookes University, UK in 2009. Mrs. Majdalani is the director of Ecopeace Middle East in Palestine. She is a PhD candidate at the University of Hamburg, co-supervised by Dr Christiane Fröhlich.