By Mohamed Abdel Raouf, Special to Gulf News.

The Arab world is currently facing numerous challenges and problems. Some are traditional such as security issues, water scarcity, rising unemployment and pollution. There are other emerging challenges such as increasing urbanisation, climate change impact and rising demand for energy.

Creating green and decent jobs in the Arab world is a key to sustainability and stability across the region.

For instance, all Arab countries suffer from the problems of rapid urbanisation, especially some countries that are almost 100 per cent urbanised such as Bahrain and Qatar. In addition, youth on an average constitute around 60 per cent of the population. This leads to huge demands for food, employment, housing, education, healthcare, transportation systems and other services.

When addressing these rising social, economic, and environmental challenges that are facing the Arab World, one can easily realise that these challenges are interlinked and must be addressed through an integrated approach. All these demands need to be managed in a sustainable way. Creating green and decent jobs in the Arab world is a key to sustainability and stability across the region. It was very obvious that recent turmoil and chaos over the past few years clearly linked to jobs in terms of availability and decency.