The report alerts that the Arab region faces a critical water situation. With the exception of Egypt, Sudan, Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria, all the Arab countries are projected to experience severe water stress by the year 2025. Projected global warming has the potential to add increasing pressure on already dwindling water supplies.

Cautioning that water use efficiency does not exceed 50%, the report calls for policies and programmes to stop wasteful exploitation of water in agricultural, industrial and domestic domains.

While calling to secure enough water for food production and human and industrial needs, the report cautions against the mushrooming of golf courses, which will double in few years to 40 in GCC countries. It points out that each golf course in these arid countries consumes about 1.3 million cubic metres annually, enough to cover the water consumption needs of 15,000 inhabitants.

The report recognizes desertification as posing the most pressing threat to productive lands in the whole Arab region, but the response has so far been insufficient.

The report mentions that although the Arab region does not contribute more than 5% to the causes of global climate change, its effects on the region will be very severe.

Sea level rise (SLR) due to rising temperatures has the potential to cause the loss of significant portions of agricultural land in the Arab region. Even a 1m SLR could potentially cause the loss of 12% to 15% of agricultural land in the Nile Delta region, and could reduce Qatar's land area by 2.6%. Higher temperatures will also increase the incidence and impact of drought in the region, threatening water resources and productive land. As this report shows, drought frequency has already increased in Algeria, Morocco, Syria, and Tunisia. Recent droughts in Jordan and Syria were the worst recorded in many decades.

As the air quality in Arab cities continues to steadily deteriorate, the costs of health and environmental consequences are drastically rising. Health problems attributed to air pollution from the transport sector alone cost Arab countries over five billion dollars annually. Per capita carbon oxides emissions have risen steadily in most countries of the region in the last three decades. Some Gulf countries emit up to 10 times the global average. Monitoring results in Egypt, Lebanon and Syria recorded pollution levels between six to eight times higher than accepted limits.

The fragile marine and coastal environment of the Arab region, which stretches over 30,000 kilometers of which 18,000 kilometers are populated, is threatened by pollution, over-fishing, loss of biodiversity, climate change, and other problems.

According to the report, effective environmental scientific research stands at the very basis of combating environmental degradation. However, the rate of expenditure on scientific research as a percentage of GDP is abysmally low in the Arab region, at around 0.2%. The world average is 1.4%, with the rate being 4% in Japan.. The report recommends that regional scientific databases be created and strengthened.

Where they exist, educational environmental programmes are still in their infancy, and many disciplines are lacking, such as environmental legislation and management, as well as the integration of environment into development plans, programmes, and projects. The report traced 100 Arabic periodicals and newsletters with environmental titles. However, the subject is seldom dealt with in depth, and critical analysis and expert insights are rarely provided.