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Climate change is progressing fast and is undeniably a man-made disaster. Its impacts - heatwaves, floods, sea-level rise, melting ice caps, erratic rainfall, desertification, and similar - are likely to worsen in intensity and increase in frequency for many years to come. While the question of why measures to halt climate change are not fully implemented is not easily answered, it is necessary to reflect meanwhile on the strategies employed by governing actors to legitimise such inaction. One such strategy is the attempt to ignore the "human" aspects of natural disasters, like bad governance and mismanagement, a process called "ecologisation." Climate change lends itself easily to this. By presenting drought, floods, and other extreme weather events as "natural" and thus "beyond our control," governing actors can deflect responsibility for their mismanagement and bad governance regarding natural resources. This has happened in Syria, for example, following the prolonged drought occurring in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Political Ecology provides key knowledge on how these problems can be constructed as "environmental" or "natural," how such "environmental" situations can be positioned as unprecedented and disastrous, and how framings like these may support ulterior political goals. Somewhat counterintuitively, it may be necessary to "de-naturalise" phenomena that have been attributed to climate change to uncover the broader sociopolitical impetuses behind them. With the fight over a possible trade-off between climate action and human rights already ongoing, policymakers need to learn how to both identify and address "ecologising moves." One way of doing this is by strengthening civil society actors who are identifying and calling out such moves, often under existential threat.

Fleeing war, repression, and economic breakdown in their home country, Syrians have become the largest group of refugees in the Middle East. Relative to their own populations, neighboring Jordan and Lebanon have hosted the most Syrians per capita. While both are small, middle-income, and resource-poor countries, the perception of their respective governance of Syrian refugees has been diametrically different: While the 2016 Jordan Compact has been hailed as a success story of innovative refugee governance, the Lebanon Compact has never achieved similar recognition. Instead, Lebanon has been criticized for applying a largely laissez-faire, non-policy approach to the Syrian crisis. The main objective of this short intervention is to evaluate both compacts 5 years after their signing and to outline a more reflective potential EU policy approach.

As hydro-meteorological hazards are predicted to become more frequent and intense in the future, scholars and policymakers are increasingly concerned about their security implications, especially in the context of ongoing climate change. Our study contributes to this debate by analysing the pathways to water-related conflict onset under drought conditions in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region between 1996 and 2009. It is also the first such analysis that focuses on small-scale conflicts involving little or no physical violence, such as protests or demonstrations. These nonviolent conflicts are politically relevant, yet understudied in the literature on climate change and conflict, environmental security, and political instability. We employ the method of qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) to integrate quantitative and qualitative data at various scales (national, regional, local) for a sample of 34 cases (17 of which experienced conflict onset). Our findings show that pre-existing cleavages and either autocratic political systems or cuts of the public water supply are relevant predictors of nonviolent, water-related conflict onset during droughts. Grievances deeply embedded into socio-economic structures in combination with a triggering event like a drought or water cuts are hence driving such water-related conflicts, especially in the absence of proper political institutions. We thus argue that drought-conflict links are highly context-dependent even for nonviolent, local conflicts, hence challenging determinist narratives that claim direct interlinkages between climate change, hydro-meteorological disasters and conflict.

So-called "climate migration", i. e. human mobility following prolonged drought periods, floods, or other climate-related environmental changes, has been singled out as an important factor connecting climate change effects and (violent) conflict. However, the existing studies on this relationship do not offer a clear picture. Nevertheless, Syria has evolved into a "show case study" for this assumed linear causality: A "century drought" and ensuing internal migration are seen as an untold prequel of the Syrian uprising. This alarmist, determinist, and simplifying image is questioned and reviewed in order to answer the following questions: Was the Syrian drought related to or caused by climate change? Which role, if any, did it play for internal migration in pre-revolutionary Syria? What do we know about "drought migrants" and their role in the Syrian uprising? The article summarizes available research and adds to it by way of interviews with Syrian refugees.

Between normative aspirations and national interests, forced migrants often become pawns in host states' negotiations with internal and external actors. Focusing on North Africa, the Middle East, and the Horn of Africa, this paper offers an analytical framework to better understand forced migration governance across space and time from a more global, pluralist perspective in a logic of iterative theory-building. We hypothesise that some drivers of forced migration governance are distinct from drivers of migration governance - for example, global policy and conceptions of humanitarian norms and principles play a larger role in the former. We hypothesise that while forced migration governance is negotiated around humanitarian principles, in which international actors, externalisation, and civil society play a crucial role, it also functions as a regime strategy and is driven by certain characteristics of forced migrant groups, including size and perceived identity proximity. Finally, forced migration governance is characterised by strong path dependency.

The Syrian crisis continues to kill and uproot. More than six million people have been internally displaced, while well over five million have fled the country - with the majority residing in Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey. Like the spaces of civilian political agency in different parts of the world, ones of humanitarian protection also seem to be shrinking in some of the main refugee-hosting states in the Middle East too. Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey have taken in millions of Syrian refugees since the beginning of the Syrian war. All three countries followed an open-door policy in the first phase of the Syrian conflict, assuming that the uprising would be as short-lived as its precedents in Tunisia and Egypt. All three states have implemented a temporary protection regime, on the one hand providing fast and relatively non-bureaucratic refuge for Syrians fleeing while on the other excluding them from the special protection that comes with official refugee status. All three states have experienced the shocking disinterest of the international community in the Syrian crisis, which became most apparent in the enduring and severe underfunding of aid efforts in the region. All three states have since almost completely reversed their initial policies, with border closings, migrant criminalisations, and refoulement becoming regular practices. The movement out of the region and towards supposedly "safer" areas like the European Union has engendered a vicious circle of migrant deterrence and pressure on transit states, in which the refugees themselves are mere pawns. The continually progressing walling-off policies of the Global North increase the likelihood of Syrians staying in Jordan, Lebanon, or Turkey. Many would like to return home to rebuild their lives. It is, however, unclear how they will fare if Syria - where the war is still ongoing - is reconstructed in cooperation with the old regime and its cronies. Both internal and external actors need to recognise this in their efforts to reconstruct the state.

Der Krieg in Syrien fordert weiterhin Todesopfer und erzeugt Zwangsmigration. Über sechs Millionen Menschen leben als Binnenvertriebene im eigenen Land, während über fünf Millionen ins Ausland geflohen sind - die meisten nach Jordanien, in den Libanon und die Türkei. Ähnlich wie sich in verschiedenen Weltregionen der Handlungsspielraum für zivilgesellschaftliches Handeln verringert, verschlechterte sich in den wichtigsten Aufnahmeländern des Nahen Ostens in den letzten Jahren der humanitäre Schutz für Geflüchtete deutlich. Jordanien, der Libanon und die Türkei nahmen seit Beginn des Syrienkrieges Millionen syrische Geflüchtete auf. In der Hoffnung, dass der Aufstand in Syrien ebenso kurzlebig sein würde wie seine Vorläufer in Tunesien und Ägypten, betrieben alle drei Länder in der ersten Phase des Syrienkonfliktes eine Politik der offenen Tür. Alle drei Staaten führten ein Regelwerk für den vorübergehenden Schutz ein. Damit wird syrischen Geflüchteten einerseits schnell und relativ unbürokratisch Zuflucht gewährt, ihnen aber andererseits der besondere Schutz versagt, der mit einem offiziellen Flüchtlingsstatus verbunden ist. Alle drei Staaten mussten das erschreckende Desinteresse der internationalen Gemeinschaft an der Syrienkrise erleben, welches sich vor allem in der gravierenden Unterfinanzierung von Hilfsmaßnahmen für die Region manifestiert. Seit einiger Zeit haben alle drei Staaten ihre anfängliche Politik fast vollständig revidiert: Grenzschließungen sowie die Kriminalisierung und Zurückweisung (refoulement) von Migranten wurden zur Regel. Die Verlagerung aus der Region in vermeintlich "sicherere" Gebiete wie die Europäische Union hat einen Teufelskreis aus Abschreckung und Druck auf die Transitstaaten in Gang gesetzt, in dem die Geflüchteten lediglich Schachfiguren sind. Durch die fortschreitende Abschottungspolitik des globalen Nordens steigt die Wahrscheinlichkeit, dass syrische Geflüchtete in Jordanien, im Libanon oder in der Türkei bleiben müssen. Viele von ihnen würden gern nach Hause zurückkehren, jedoch ist weiterhin unklar, wie es ihnen ergehen wird, wenn in Syrien - wo der Krieg aktuell andauert - beim Wiederaufbau mit dem alten Regime und seinen Verbündeten zusammengearbeitet wird. Inländische wie ausländische Akteure müssen dies bei ihren Bemühungen in Bezug auf den zukünftigen Wiederaufbau Syriens berücksichtigen.