Hanne Knaepen looks at the EU’s Southern neighbourhood, which faces mounting climate pressures, arguing that a transition cannot be just if it leaves structural vulnerabilities unaddressed.
A just climate transition in the EU’s Southern neighbourhood remains more promise than practice. While the region faces mounting climate pressures, policies too often overlook the cascading and systemic impacts that deepen inequality and fragility. The EU’s approach, though ambitious, risks reinforcing economic dependency or serving its own strategic goals, rather than strengthening locally grounded systems that can withstand compound shocks. A transition cannot be just if it leaves these structural vulnerabilities unaddressed.
Compounding crises
The IPCC flags the entire Mediterranean as a climate hotspot, warming 20% faster than the global average. The greatest risks fall on marginalised rural communities in countries in the EU’s Southern neighbourhood – across North Africa and the Middle East – not just because of the changing climate, but due to deep-rooted economic and governance weaknesses (1).
The EU’s Southern neighbourhood is highly exposed to cascading and systemic climate impacts that cut across sectors and borders. A single drought can trigger crop losses, price spikes, rural unemployment, migration, and social unrest – pressures no siloed response can contain. The region’s shared water basins, heavy food import reliance, and fragile politics only amplify these risks.
The Southern neighbourhood already imports more than half of its food, leaving it vulnerable to global price shocks from droughts, crop failures, or conflicts elsewhere. In Tunisia, cereals are imported at rates of 57–71% (2009-2017), making the country acutely exposed to disruptions in international trade. Morocco faces a similar fragility on the energy front, meeting over 90% of its energy needs through imports. Any global energy price surge – itself a cascading climate impact – could trigger not only an economic crisis in Morocco, but also instability on Europe’s doorstep.
A ‘just transition’ blind spot
The Southern neighbourhood’s heavy reliance on food and fossil fuel imports makes diversifying agri-food and energy systems urgent to cut dependency and build resilience. Done well, this shift could drive clean energy, sustainable food production, and greater equity. Without broader economic diversification, however, the region risks social unrest and economic breakdown with ripple effects reaching Europe.
A ‘just transition’ is not only about phasing out fossil fuels fairly; it’s about ensuring people have access to the resources for a dignified life and a voice in how they are managed. Yet, climate injustice remains stark: smallholders in Tunisia and Egypt’s Nile delta lose land to saltwater intrusion or compete with industry for water, while fishermen move to urban slums as warming seas deplete their catch. Across North Africa, scarce water feeds export crops for Europe rather than staple foods for locals. These are the real frontlines of risk. A transition that ignores them cannot be just.
Across the region, the contours of a ‘just transition’ remain unclear, with few concrete policies or frameworks in place. Rural populations are neglected, independent civil society is shrinking, and questions of equity rarely shape policy.
In Morocco, the energy transition has already fuelled land and water conflicts, compounding local vulnerabilities: large-scale solar projects like Noor Ouarzazate have been linked to displacement and the redirection of the Oued Drâa river, which devastated downstream farming communities and wiped out date palm plantations. New hydrogen, phosphate, and renewable ventures aimed at exports to Europe face growing criticism of ‘green colonialism’. The vast land required for these projects threatens farmland and indigenous territories, compounding local vulnerabilities.
“The contours of a ‘just transition’ remain unclear, with few concrete policies or frameworks in place.”
Europe’s dilemmas
On paper, the EU has extended its Green Deal principles to the Southern neighbourhood, pledging – in its 2021 New Agenda for the Mediterranean – to support fairer and more inclusive societies through the green transition and greater climate resilience. In practice, however, the 2025 New Pact for the Mediterranean appears more defensive, shaped by Europe’s priorities on energy security and migration rather than by a genuine commitment to adaptation, resilience, and a just transition. Officially adopted in October 2025, this risks locking the region into a pathway where resources primarily serve Europe’s food and energy needs, while domestic governance gaps prevent the revenues from being channelled into adaptation and local resilience.
Cascading climate impacts inevitably spill across borders. The EU’s new Union Preparedness Strategy recognises these systemic links, reframing adaptation as ‘strategic resilience’ and connecting it to food systems and the climate–security nexus. Yet while this pragmatism may bolster Europe’s security posture, it risks turning resilience into a defensive agenda, serving self-interest over solidarity and sidelining the broader climate and justice agenda.
Europe’s proximity and deep economic interdependence with its Southern neighbours give it a self-interest in the region’s stability. This relationship cuts both ways: it also offers room for mutual learning. Southern Europe, facing growing aridity, could draw lessons from anti-desertification strategies already in use in Morocco.
“A just transition in the Southern neighbourhood should align the energy shift and climate adaptation with inclusive development.”
A dim outlook for a just transition
In principle, a just transition in the Southern neighbourhood should align the energy shift and climate adaptation with inclusive development, allowing countries to shape sovereign policies, create green jobs, and ensure fair outcomes. Recognising cascading and systemic climate impacts only sharpens the urgency: a just transition must strengthen coherence across systems, not resilience in one sector alone.
The reality on the ground, however, tells a different story. Entrenched authoritarianism has delivered little for citizens, sparking social unrest such as last year’s youth-led protests in Morocco. Independent civil society, essential to any just transition, is often silenced. A growing post-colonial sentiment adds to this tension, framing the EU’s green ambitions as another form of external control and increasingly as a threat to Europe’s own economic and geopolitical interests. Resentment toward perceived neocolonial practices is already spilling into pushback against European influence, as seen, for example, in the expulsion of French companies from parts of West Africa. Meanwhile, governments across the Southern neighbourhood are deepening ties with Russia and China, whose models leave little room for equity or participation, while Europe’s energy dependence on the same regimes weakens its leverage for reform.
This political reality erodes the foundations of a just transition. Such a shift would require turning energy and agri-food systems into socially grounded projects that meet domestic needs, reducing foreign dependency, decarbonising local economies, strengthening regional food chains, and investing in adaptive social protection. Yet, the prevailing model continues to favour large-scale, export-oriented initiatives catering to European demand, reproducing dependency within a model that has a built-in expiration date. The EU itself projects an 80% drop in oil imports by 2050, a scenario that could tear holes in the balance sheets of petrostates like Libya and Algeria, heightening instability on Europe’s doorstep
The EU’s own response risks reinforcing this trajectory. Rather than moving from a security-first lens to one of shared resilience, initiatives such as the Global Gateway tend to remain geared toward elite-centric connectivity, with limited local ownership. The New Pact for the Mediterranean and the new DG MENA agenda, focused on digitalisation and electricity connections, risk overlooking the core ‘software’ of a just transition: adaptation, water governance, and biodiversity.
Any credible EU approach must support ‘adaptive climate governance’, moving beyond an infrastructure-led focus to include social legitimacy and trust for durable delivery.
The current hardware-first mindset misses the longer-term business case for climate-resilient infrastructure, essential for a genuinely investable green economy. Europe’s securitised foreign policy could, in theory, advance climate resilience; in practice, it is becoming a missed opportunity. By prioritising short-term strategic interests over shared sustainability, the EU risks not only failing to enable a just transition but also actively hindering it.
About the Author:
Dr Hanne Knaepen is the head of ECDPM’s climate action and green transition team.