While its origins lie in long-term carbon emissions, the impacts show climate change’s most devastating human effects are a function of political choices. This research is informed by several variables, such as the impact of climate change as an intervening variable over water and food security, the role played by government policy in the agricultural, water and employment sectors and failure by local governments, regional and international institutions to address vulnerability and adaptive gaps. Combined with unsustainable development, the weaponization of resources and infrastructure during armed conflicts and/or occupation also represent catalysts for increased human and environmental costs. I propose to engage with the critical literature on climate security and justice. I argue that this approach more adequately illuminates complex issues of climate change framed around water, food, displacement and migration. I furthermore engage with critical literature on the colonial and gendered dimensions of climate change, adaptation and displacement. Specifically, I will consider the impacts of colonial legacies in the Arab world on global and regional warming and the ways gender dynamics affect vulnerability. This alternative understanding of climate security offers a promising venue for bridging development and climate change when assessing differential vulnerability and adaptive capacities within the region. These will be assessed in terms of differentiated impacts within selected sub-regional cases: drought and migration (Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Sudan), armed conflict (Syria, Yemen), conflict and occupation (Gaza, Golan Heights, West Bank). The analysis will particularly focus on those particularly vulnerable to climate change impacts, such as migrants, rural communities, and populations in conflict. I will consider environmental justice as the way forward. This section will demonstrate the necessity for reaching an understanding of environmental justice that involves re-thinking political and capitalist carbon-based infrastructures, embracing climate reparations, and repositioning global knowledge production away from exclusively the “global North”. From climate-proofing Syrian and Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan and Lebanon and camps for the displaced to land management and crop production, this research demonstrates the critical role indigenous environmental knowledge plays in climate adaptation. This research adopts qualitative research methods that prioritize a discussion of conceptual and empirical factors by drawing on primary sources and incorporating local expertise in the analysis. These sources will be collected both remotely and in the region (where and when possible). Interviews will be carried out with regionally-based organizations and grassroots initiatives that are attuned to local dynamics, knowledge, and needs.