In the Middle East and North Africa, the climate crisis is not a distant threat but an everyday reality. While much of the global media continues to frame the region through conflict and geopolitics, a group of filmmakers is redirecting attention to a quieter yet deeply harmful danger.
Rising temperatures, disappearing water sources, burning forests, and collapsing livelihoods are no longer warnings about the future; they are already shaping the present.
Across Morocco, Lebanon, Yemen and beyond, a new wave of documentaries is making the environmental emergency impossible to ignore.
Often driven by local voices, these films follow bees, trees, oases and coral reefs. They are not just telling stories. They are sounding the alarm.
When climate meets camera
One example is Sada, a documentary series by Carnegie's Middle East Programme. It opens in Yemen, not with the usual footage of war, but with a beekeeper.
Once a thriving trade, honey production in Yemen has been severely impacted by drought, extreme heat, and the decline of local flora.
The series travels across Morocco, Jordan, and Syria, illustrating how environmental stress affects daily life. Livelihoods vanish not with a bang but bit by bit, job by job, field by field.
Before Sada, Greenpeace MENA's short films had already begun charting a similar path. They span six countries, documenting environmental damage that is both personal and expansive.
In Lebanon, ancient cedar forests are being eaten away by invasive pests. In Algeria, farmland is disappearing as the desert advances. One film pauses at the Red Sea, where once-thriving coral reefs are turning pale and brittle, pulling fishing communities into crisis with them.
Then there is The Disappearing Oasis, a virtual reality film by Al Jazeera's Contrast VR and Lookout Station. It takes viewers to M'hamid in southeastern Morocco, where the Sahara is creeping steadily over the town.
This film does not bombard the audience with statistics. It lets people speak. It lets you hear what it feels like to lose your land. It is about what is happening, yes, but even more about who is being left behind.
All these films share a commonality. They are rooted in the places they depict, are created by people who live the realities they document, and pose hard questions about justice.
The MENA region is far from the biggest polluter on the planet. Yet, it is often among the hardest hit. These stories make that contradiction impossible to ignore.
The idea that climate change is also linked to inequality is central to the work of Lebanese journalist and producer Nada Issa. At the recent BAFTA Green Light Season, an event focused on climate storytelling in film and television, Nada joined a group of creatives who are using their craft to demand accountability.
Nada worked on projects like Joe Lycett vs The Oil Giant, a Channel 4 special that tackled corporate greenwashing. The show used humour to make serious points. For Issa, that was part of the strategy.
"What drew me in was the urgency, our planet is on fire, and yet the response from those in power remains inadequate. Oil giants continue to greenwash while lobbying governments into complacency," she says.
"Meanwhile, those who contribute least to climate change pay the highest price. I wanted to work on a project that could cut through the noise. Joe Lycett vs The Oil Giant was an opportunity to blend serious investigative journalism with entertainment in a way that felt fresh and accessible. By combining factual storytelling with satire and personality-led formats, we aimed to engage audiences emotionally and intellectually, hopefully sparking conversation, accountability, and even change."
In a world where many tune out the moment "things get too heavy", it's vital we find new ways to reach audiences, Nada says, adding: "Humour can be a powerful tool, not to dilute the issue, but to draw people in. The aim isn't to trivialise environmental harm, but to use comedy as a means to foster a deeper understanding. By subverting expectations and avoiding a preachy tone, we can keep the storytelling sharp, engaging, and ultimately more impactful."
At BAFTA's Green Light Season, which opened in June with a screening of Ocean with David Attenborough, organisers placed climate stories at the heart of their programming.
Jane Millichip, BAFTA's CEO, said the season aimed to highlight creative work on the climate crisis and encourage more storytellers to adopt both sustainable practices and environmental narratives. She said the goal was not just to celebrate progress, but to have honest conversations about what remains difficult and unresolved.
Nada appeared alongside producers like Emily Hudd from Joe Lycett's Got Your Back, Keith Scholey from Ocean, and Tom Davies from The Great British Sewing Bee. She stood out as one of the strongest voices highlighting that the SWANA region is often overlooked in mainstream environmental coverage.
"Western narratives tend to forget that industrialised, wealthier nations, including European countries and oil-producing states, largely drive climate change. Meanwhile, the global South, including many African nations, suffers disproportionately despite contributing the least to carbon emissions," Nada says.
"Within the SWANA region, there are also powerful, grassroots stories of innovation around sustainability, recycling, and adaptation, stories that rarely make headlines. These untold initiatives challenge the stereotype of environmental apathy and deserve far greater visibility," she adds.
But for Nada, telling more stories is not enough. The stories have to change. She is critical of how the climate is framed in Western media.
All too often, it is treated as either a technical problem or a distant crisis. What is missing, she says, is the connection. Migration, displacement and ecological collapse are linked. Western consumption and policy are part of what fuels destruction elsewhere. But these links are rarely made clear.
"We need more stories that connect the dots: the impact of climate injustice, local resilience, and innovation (including within the SWANA region), and how our choices in the West are inextricably linked to consequences elsewhere."
Sarah Khalil is a senior editor and journalist at The New Arab