This is a conversation with professor Marwa Daoudy, associate professor at Georgetown University and the author of the recently published book The Origins of the Syrian Conflict: Climate Change and Human Security.

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Topics Discussed:

Climate change did not cause the Syrian revolution, despite this narrative continuing to dominate in many circles, and why this deterministic narrative strips away the agency of Syrian revolutionaries
The ‘securitization’ of language, how refugees and migrants going to global north countries are treated through militarized language, and how calling them ‘climate migrants’ can be problematic
How did the pre-2011 drought affect the uprising, if at all?
Bashar Al-Assad urban/rural divide and conquer strategy
Assad’s neoliberal reforms and their impacts on water and food politics
The role of ideology (baathism, neoliberalism etc) in Syria
The issue of ‘state security’ rhetoric and how a Human-Environmental-Climate Security (HECS) framework can help understand reality better
The relationship between the World Bank and the Syrian regime
Neo-Malthusian politics and its presence in international politics
Europe’s extractivist economies and the complicity in scapegoating ‘climate migrants’
The idea of ‘climate security’ and why it’s problematic

Book Recommendations:

Music by Tarabeat.

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