Climate change in Algeria


Climate change has wide reaching effects on the country of Algeria. Algeria was not a significant contributor to climate change, but like other countries in the Mena region, is expected to be on the front-lines of climate change impacts.
Because a large part of the country is in already hot and arid geographies, including part of the Sahara, already strong heat and water resource access challenges are expected to get worse. As early as 2014, scientist were attributing extreme heat waves to climate change in Algeria.
Algeria was ranked 46th of countries in the 2020 Climate Change Performance Index.

Emissions

Algeria is a low emitter of carbon dioxide: producing 4.1 tons per capita as of 2008, less than the global average at that times. At that time the 74% of their emission came from energy production.

Impacts

Water

According to World Bank, Algeria qualifies as a water scarce country. Moreover, groundwater is already overexploited.

Agriculture

Agricultural land and water is already under pressure from both human activity, and desertification, erosion, and vegetation loss. Climate change is expected to speed up this process, weakening soil and biodiversity in farmland. Every part of agriculture in the country is expected to be effected: for example, small scale shepherding which is a common form of agriculture, becomes increasingly expensive as herders have to dig wells and buy feed, rather than use grazing.

Government action

The initial strategy developed by Algeria, as of 2013, focused on four areas: institutional strengthening, adaptation to climate change, mitigation of emissions of GHG and human capacity building.

International participation

Algeria followed through on its commitment to the Kyoto Protocol and has ratified the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. However, the 2020 Climate Change Performance Index described their policy approach as not enough to meet the 2° C goal.