8 August 2026 5:18 am
MENA Project Momentum Holds Despite Conflict Disruption

MENA Project Momentum Holds Despite Conflict Disruption

Jun 11, 2026

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Mena project momentum holds despite conflict disruption

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MEED – 10 June 2026

By Colin Foreman

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GlobalData’s Construction Projects Momentum Index for April 2026 shows the region in third place globally, with execution-stage activity recovering even as the Israel-Iran conflict weighs on the pipeline

The Middle East and North Africa’s construction project pipeline has demonstrated considerable resilience in the months since the military conflict between the US, Israel and Iran began in late February, although the regional performance has softened from its early-year highs and the full effects of the geopolitical shock continue to ripple through the project market.

GlobalData’s Construction Projects Momentum Index (CPMI) for the Mena region recorded 0.86 in April 2026, placing the region third globally behind North-east Asia and South Asia. The Mena score represents a 12% decline from 0.98 in March, which itself was unchanged from February. The regional three-month moving average eased modestly to 0.96 in April from 0.97 in March, suggesting that while momentum has nudged lower, the pipeline has not experienced the kind of sustained deterioration that might have been expected given the severity of the geopolitical disruption.

The resilience partly reflects the composition of the regional project market. The Mena region’s largest markets, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, have both continued to record solid momentum in the months following the start of hostilities in February. The UAE led the region in April with a CPMI of 1.20, easing only slightly from 1.30 in March, while Saudi Arabia recorded 0.94.

Mixed performance

The impact of the conflict is most visible at the country level, where a sharp divergence has opened up between markets directly exposed to the fighting and those insulated from it. Israel recorded the lowest CPMI score in the region in April at -3.26, reflecting substantial delays to major projects. The East Mediterranean Gas Pipeline was among the most significant casualties, with its Final Investment Decision pushed well beyond its original timeline. Iran, another direct participant in the conflict, registered a markedly weaker score of 0.53 in April, a stark reversal from its position as one of the region’s strongest performers in January, when it posted 1.31.

The conflict’s first major imprint on the index appeared in March, when the CPMI data reflected the initial shock of the escalation. Execution-stage momentum in the region dipped from 1.06 in February to 0.89 in March, while pre-execution activity slipped from 1.02 to 0.95. Infrastructure, which had been a strong performer earlier in the year, fell sharply to 0.53 in March from 1.06 in February, with the institutional sector also pulling back from 1.27 to 0.78. These moves are consistent with the channels through which conflict typically disrupts construction activity — cost inflation driven by energy price volatility, supply chain disruption and elevated risk premiums that delay investment decisions.

Stability signs

By April, some of these pressures had begun to ease, at least at the index level. Execution momentum recovered to 1.01, reversing the March dip, and infrastructure returned as the top-performing sector with a CPMI of 1.13. Commercial and leisure activity also remained solid at 0.94, building on gains that have been sustained throughout the conflict period.

Pre-execution momentum, however, continued to soften, falling to 0.86 in April from 0.95 in March. This is significant because the pre-execution stage — which captures project planning, design development and procurement preparation — is where investor caution and risk reassessment typically show up first. A sustained decline in this segment would signal a thinning of the future project pipeline, even if near-term execution activity holds up.

Kuwait offers a specific illustration of how supply chain and procurement disruptions linked to the conflict can affect individual markets. In January, Kuwait had recorded a CPMI of 0.27, depressed by delays to tender packages on Kuwait Oil Company developments including the SGC1, SGC II, SGC III and JLO Export Facility projects. The country recovered strongly to 1.43 in February and 0.90 in March, before falling back to 0.55 in April, with delays reported on Dorra Field developments. The oscillation reflects the vulnerability of projects with complex procurement requirements to the kind of supply chain uncertainty the conflict has generated.

Future pipeline

The Mena region entered 2026 from a position of strength, having ranked first globally in January with a CPMI of 1.05 — a 16% jump from December 2025’s 0.90. That momentum reflected broad-based gains across infrastructure, residential and institutional sectors, with Qatar, the UAE and Iran all posting scores above 1.20.

The conflict began when the region’s project pipeline was strong, and the data suggest that the buffer of accumulated momentum has helped absorb the initial shock. Whether that buffer holds through the remainder of 2026 will depend on how the conflict develops and, in particular, whether the more cautious behaviour visible in pre-execution activity translates into a deferral of new project launches. GlobalData’s data through April suggest the region is maintaining momentum, but the direction of the pre-execution trend is a forward-looking indicator to be watched in the coming months.

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How Global Agreements Are Saving the World’s Seas

How Global Agreements Are Saving the World’s Seas

Jun 8, 2026

Close-up of a toy boat placed on the Arabian Sea section of a world map depicting regions around India. by Lara Jameson via Pexels

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How global agreements are saving the world’s seas

UNEP

In the early 1970s, a trip to the beaches of Naples, Italy was a roll of the dice.

The city’s coastal waters were so flush with sewage and industrial waste, that one summer nearly 20 per cent of Belgian and French tourists claimed they contracted an infectious disease after taking a dip.

While the situation in Naples grabbed headlines, similar environmental disasters were unfolding across the Mediterranean Sea in the early 1970s. A combination of rapid industrialization, breakneck population growth and lax environmental laws had turned the sea into one of the world’s most-polluted bodies of water.

But that would soon start to change. In 1974 The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) brought together nearly two dozen nations to hash out a plan for saving the Mediterranean. The work was made possible by contributions to the Environment Fund, UNEP’s core source of flexible financing, which had been established a year earlier.

The result of the talks was the Barcelona Convention, a 1976 pact that placed strict limits on pollution in the sea. The deal celebrated its 50th anniversary earlier this year.

“The convention was a landmark achievement,” says Alberto Pacheco Capella, Chief of the Regional Seas Branch at the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). “It came at a critical moment for the Mediterranean and set the template for decades of environmental diplomacy.”

The Barcelona Convention marked the first success of the fledgling Regional Seas Programme, which has since evolved into a globe-spanning effort to protect the world’s saltwater bodies. The programme was founded on the idea that international cooperation is vital for protecting seas, which provide food and jobs to hundreds of millions of people around the world.

Today, more than 145 countries participate in regional seas agreements, which cover 18 bodies of water, from the Arabian Gulf to the Caribbean Sea. These conventions and action plans, some of which contain legally binding rules, emphasize science-backed policy making. They have played an instrumental role in protecting biodiversity, stemming pollution, strengthening ocean-based economies, circulating cutting-edge science and supporting seaside communities, especially those struggling with the effects of climate change.

“Over the decades, the Regional Seas Programme has demonstrated what’s possible when countries work together” says Pacheco Capella. “It also shows how this kind of international cooperation can improve the lives of people who live near seas and who depend on them for their livelihoods.”

The success of the Regional Seas Programme is also a testament to the importance of the Environment Fund, says Soomi Ro, the Director of UNEP’s Corporate Services Division. Along with underpinning the diplomacy of the 1970s and UNEP’s convening power to have nations to work together, the fund supported what would become regional seas programmes around the world, from the Caribbean, to the Indian Ocean to East Asia.

Today, the Environment Fund supports the development of technical guidance and the implementation of targeted activities across the Regional Seas Programme. It contributes to the creation of strategic action plans for the various conventions, the most recent of which cover the period from 2026 to 2029. And it backs technical work, such as the Regional Seas Indicators Framework, which strengthens the ability of countries to generate policy-relevant data and insights on issues of concern.

The fund also helps nations live up to their commitments under international accords, like the Agreement on Marine Biological Diversity of Areas beyond National Jurisdiction, a landmark pact that extends environmental protections to the high seas.

“Core funding to the Environment Fund is pivotal for carrying out efforts, like the Regional Seas Programme, that transcend borders and decades,” Ro says. “It gives UNEP the flexibility it needs to conduct science, raise public awareness and bring nations together.”

The world’s seas remain under pressure from a range of human-caused threats. In many places, overexploitation risks the future of crucial fisheries. Climate change could wipe out virtually all warm water corals this century. And every day, the equivalent of 2,000 garbage trucks full of plastic are dumped into the world’s oceans, rivers and lakes.

But in some places, like the Mediterranean Sea, things are improving. The arcing Gulf of Naples – once a haven for typhoid and hepatitis – now has a dozen beaches that have been internationally recognized for their cleanliness and sustainability.

“The Mediterranean is showing that it is possible to reverse the fortunes of flagging seas, and that development and sustainability can go hand-in-hand,” says Pacheco Capella.

 

About World Ocean Day

Held on 8 June each year, World Ocean Day unites the world to protect and restore the blue planet.

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How Sustainable Manufacturing Practices Can Reduce Waste

How Sustainable Manufacturing Practices Can Reduce Waste

Jun 6, 2026

A vast industrial complex set in a desert environment under a clear sky. by Joba Adewumi via Pexels

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How Sustainable Manufacturing Practices Can Reduce Waste and Improve Efficiency

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If you are struggling with shrinking margins and operational inefficiencies, sustainable manufacturing can be a practical way to reduce waste, lower operating costs, and improve production efficiency without sacrificing output. Sustainability is not merely a parallel environmental program; it is a core operational strategy designed to lower long-term operating expenses and improve production efficiency. By using materials more carefully, avoiding unnecessary downtime, and improving product quality, you tackle process waste. Small improvements in equipment use, energy management, maintenance, and workflow planning can create measurable results.

How Sustainable Manufacturing Practices Can Reduce Waste Eco-friendly manufacturing process

What are Sustainable Manufacturing Practices?

Sustainable manufacturing practices are active processes that help produce goods while reducing environmental impact, conserving natural resources, and improving operational performance. This approach does not always require expensive, capital-intensive facility upgrades. Instead, it systematically relies on uncovering process waste through practical steps:

  1. Reducing scrap materials through precise operations.
  2. Improving equipment maintenance to prevent routine breakdowns.
  3. Using facility energy more efficiently.
  4. Training employees to systematically avoid common daily mistakes.
  5. Recycling or reusing operational production waste.
  6. Choosing durable tools and machinery.
  7. Improving workflow layout to eliminate unnecessary movement.

The ultimate goal is to consistently produce efficiently while wasting fewer resources.

Why Waste Reduction Matters in Manufacturing

Manufacturing waste goes beyond simple physical scrap. Unseen facility waste includes idle electrical energy, defective final products, expensive unplanned downtime, chronic process overproduction, unused excess standing inventory, unnecessary physical movement, and repeatedly costly manual rework. For instance, the true cost of scrap is often much higher than the disposal fee because it includes wasted material, labor, machine time, energy, inspection, handling, and rework.

Reducing these hidden operational leaks helps modern facility manufacturers:

  1. Lower factory production costs.
  2. Improve product consistency.
  3. Reduce environmental impact.
  4. Make better operational use of standard raw materials.
  5. Extend equipment life through better maintenance and proper use.
  6. Improve global customer satisfaction.
  7. Support resilient long-term profitability.

Choosing the Right Equipment to Reduce Waste and Downtime

Equipment quality plays an important role in sustainable manufacturing. Poor-quality, outdated, or under-maintained tools can lead to inaccurate work, damaged materials, repeated errors, and unnecessary downtime.

Manufacturers can also reduce long-term waste by investing in reliable industrial power tools that support accurate work, consistent performance, and longer service life. When tools are durable and suited to the job, teams are less likely to deal with repeated errors, premature replacements, or avoidable downtime, all of which can contribute to a more efficient and sustainable production environment.

Improving Material Efficiency

Better material planning can reduce waste before a production run begins. By aligning inventory levels with actual demand instead of over-ordering or producing too much at once, manufacturers can avoid excess stock, reduce scrap, and make better use of raw materials. Manufacturers can improve material efficiency through practical steps such as:

  • Measuring accurately before cutting or machining.
  • Tracking inventory to avoid over-ordering.
  • Reusing leftover offcut materials where practical.
  • Standardizing common production workflows.
  • Reducing handling and transit damage.
  • Training workers on proper material use.
  • Designing products with less waste in mind.

Small improvements in measurement, cutting, storage, and handling can significantly reduce operational scrap over time.

Reducing Energy Consumption in Daily Operations

Energy use is one of the most practical areas where manufacturers can improve sustainability and reduce operating costs. Motor-driven equipment, compressed air systems, lighting, HVAC, and high-energy production processes are often major areas to review when looking for energy savings. Practical steps include:

  1. Turning off idle machines.
  2. Maintaining motors and compressed air systems.
  3. Using energy-efficient commercial lighting.
  4. Scheduling batch production more efficiently.
  5. Monitoring high-energy processes.
  6. Keeping tools and industrial machines properly calibrated.
  7. Identifying aging equipment that uses excessive electricity.

By matching energy use more closely to actual production demand, manufacturers can reduce waste while supporting both environmental and cost-saving goals.

Preventive Maintenance as a Sustainability Strategy

Preventive maintenance helps manufacturers avoid unexpected breakdowns, poor-quality output, production delays, and premature equipment replacement. Routine cleaning, inspection, lubrication, calibration, and recordkeeping allow teams to catch small problems before they become costly failures.

Basic maintenance tasks should include:

  • Regular inspections
  • Cleaning tools and machines
  • Lubricating moving parts
  • Checking calibration
  • Replacing worn parts before failure
  • Keeping organized maintenance records
  • Training operators to report early warning signs

Using Lean Manufacturing Principles

Lean manufacturing and sustainable manufacturing often work together because both focus on reducing waste and improving efficiency. Lean principles help manufacturers produce more value while using fewer resources:

  1. Avoid overproduction.
  2. Reduce waiting time.
  3. Minimize unnecessary movement.
  4. Improve workflow layout.
  5. Reduce defects.
  6. Keep inventory controlled.
  7. Standardize repeatable tasks.
  8. Improve communication across teams.

Training Employees for Sustainable Workflows

Sustainability depends on daily habits, not just management policies or equipment upgrades. Trained employees are more likely to prevent mistakes, reduce rework, and identify opportunities for improvement.

Key training areas include:

  1. Proper tool use.
  2. Accurate measurement.
  3. Safe material handling.
  4. Waste sorting and recycling.
  5. Energy-conscious habits.
  6. Reporting equipment problems early.
  7. Following standardized procedures.

Tracking Progress With Measurable Goals

Manufacturers should measure sustainability progress instead of relying on assumptions. Tracking these numbers helps companies identify what is working, where waste is still happening, and which improvements should come next.

Useful metrics include:

  1. Scrap rate.
  2. Energy use per production cycle.
  3. Machine downtime.
  4. Defect rate.
  5. Material reuse rate.
  6. Maintenance frequency.
  7. Production output per resource used.
  8. Waste disposal costs.

Next Steps for More Sustainable Manufacturing

Sustainable manufacturing is built through consistent improvements across materials, equipment, energy use, maintenance, and employee training. Manufacturers should review their current operations, identify their biggest sources of waste, and prioritize improvements that reduce costs while supporting more responsible production.

If Kuwait Were a Company, Would You Buy In?

If Kuwait Were a Company, Would You Buy In?

Jun 3, 2026

Stunning view of modern skyscrapers in Kuwait City, showcasing urban architecture. by Tayssir Kadamany via Pexels

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If Kuwait were a company, would you buy the story?

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By Abdulaziz Abdullah Al Smairi

As markets dissect the newly filed SpaceX prospectus, one useful question proposes itself: what if Kuwait had to present itself to investors in the same way? A prospectus is an unforgiving document. It strips away sentiment and asks what the asset base is, where the dependencies lie and whether the story can withstand scrutiny. If Kuwait were held to that same discipline, the more revealing questions would begin well beyond the oil story.

Viewed this way, Kuwait’s central issue is not simply its dependence on oil revenues as that point is already well understood. The more important question is where its deeper strategic dependencies lie and whether they have been developed into areas of national competence. Water is an obvious case. Kuwait depends fundamentally on desalination, but dependence by itself is not a strategy.

The relevant question is whether that reliance has been translated into enduring expertise, technological depth and industrial capability. Kuwait entered this field early, and institutions such as the Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research have continued to contribute to desalination and water-management technologies. But the strategic test remains straightforward: when a country relies so heavily on a capability essential to daily life, has it built a durable and exportable advantage around it?

The same test applies to oil. It is not enough for the sector to remain the economy’s dominant pillar if its cost base continues to rise and the critical knowledge remains concentrated in a generation approaching retirement, without a sufficiently visible successor bench behind them. A serious investor would ask whether Kuwait is building the managerial depth, technical capability and institutional continuity needed to protect the long-term economics of its most important sector. The same logic applies in financial services.

Having an active banking sector is not enough on its own. What matters is whether Kuwait has a deep enough bench of national talent to lead that sector over time. When the Central Bank presses for Kuwaitization, the issue is not merely one of staffing policy. It points to a wider structural requirement: building a stronger pipeline of qualified national leadership for one of the country’s most consequential sectors.

What ultimately matters in any prospectus, however, is not only the quality of the underlying assets, but the system’s ability to organize those assets into a coherent operating model. Kuwait does not lack assets, capital or institutions. The more material question is whether they are strategically connected. Do energy, logistics, education, regulation and investment promotion operate as separate administrative tracks, or as part of a broader national model for value creation?

A serious investor would want to know not only what Kuwait owns, but whether the state can align mandates, reduce duplication, assign accountability clearly and sustain execution over time. In that sense, the constraint is not resource scarcity. It is coordination capacity which is the ability to turn national strengths from parallel holdings into a development model that compounds over time and produces growth, jobs and lasting national capability.

The same logic extends to soft power. Kuwait has a meaningful legacy in journalism, culture and social action, and its past cultural, diplomatic and humanitarian role is well established. But the strategic question is whether those strengths were institutionalized in ways that continue to generate influence, renew talent and produce new generations of platforms, tools and leadership. Historical distinction has value, but in strategic terms it matters most when it is embedded in institutions, sustained over time and translated into continuing relevance.

If Kuwait were a company preparing for deeper exposure to the world, these are the questions a serious investor would ask in its prospectus: what do we truly depend on, where have we turned that dependence into national specialization, and where are we still consuming more than we are producing in knowledge, capability and leadership? Countries, like companies, are not judged only by what they own. They are judged by what they build around their critical dependencies: institutional depth, human capital and the ability to convert necessity into lasting advantage.

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The Costs of Denial in Economic Growth

The Costs of Denial in Economic Growth

Jun 2, 2026

High-angle view of Algiers features bustling traffic, historic architecture, and vibrant city life. by Adem via Pexels

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The Costs of Denial

When countries experience rapid economic growth and falling poverty, leaders and development partners often overlook governance problems lurking beneath the surface. Citizens, meanwhile, encounter corruption, favoritism, and state dysfunction in their daily lives. Over time, trust erodes. In some cases, public frustration reaches a breaking point, triggering political upheaval, economic crisis, or even civil conflict. The result is almost always slower growth and lost development gains.

In a recent working paper, I show how this pattern has played out across three regions.

Middle East and North Africa

During the first decade of this century, countries across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) enjoyed rapid economic growth, declining poverty, and—contrary to popular belief—stable or falling inequality. An international institution labeled Tunisia as “a model country.” Yet Gallup’s Life Satisfaction surveys consistently ranked MENA as the unhappiest region in the world.

The reason was a breakdown in the region’s social contract. Governments had long provided public-sector jobs, free health and education services, and subsidized food and fuel in exchange for political acquiescence. As growing numbers of young people entered the labor force, governments could no longer deliver enough public-sector jobs. Citizens responded by taking to the streets. The Arab Spring overthrew four long-standing presidents and was followed by devastating civil wars in Libya, Syria, and Yemen. Much of the region has since experienced stagnating per-capita incomes; MENA is now the only developing region where poverty is rising.

Sub-Saharan Africa

Between 1995 and 2010, Africa’s GDP growth rate doubled and poverty began to decline for the first time in decades. The optimism was palpable. The Economist, which had once labeled Africa “a hopeless continent,” ran a cover story, “Africa Rising.”

Many observers noted that the boom had not been accompanied by significant structural transformation or improvements in human capital. Weak governance remained a major constraint. Still, the prevailing view was that the governance reforms that improved macroeconomic management would sustain growth and overcome these weaknesses.

That optimism proved misplaced. When commodity prices fell in 2014, per-capita growth collapsed and has remained close to zero ever since. Governance weaknesses have even undermined macroeconomic policy: today, roughly half of African countries are either in debt distress or at high risk of it.

South Asia

Sri Lanka and Bangladesh illustrate similar dynamics. Sri Lanka entered 2020 with serious fiscal vulnerabilities. Large tax cuts caused the fiscal deficit to balloon, and the country effectively lost access to international capital markets. Rather than restructuring debt and seeking IMF support, the government continued servicing creditors from dwindling reserves while financing deficits through money creation. Two years later, the country defaulted. GDP contracted by 7 percent, inflation reached 70 percent, and a popular uprising forced the president to resign. Although the economy has since stabilized, Sri Lanka has lost a decade of growth.

Bangladesh presents a different but equally instructive case. Over several decades, it achieved rapid growth, sharp poverty reduction, and social indicators that often outperformed those of India. Yet governance problems remained pervasive. In 2003, Bangladesh was ranked the most corrupt country in the world. Policymakers and international partners treated this coexistence of strong economic performance and weak governance—the “Bangladesh paradox”—as an intellectual curiosity rather than a warning sign.

Public resentment, however, continued to build. In 2024, student protests over public-sector job restrictions grew into a nationwide movement against the government, ultimately forcing the prime minister to flee the country. The resulting uncertainty has significantly weakened investment and growth.

What can be done?

If periods of rapid growth encourage leaders and development partners to deny governance problems, and that denial ultimately fuels instability, three lessons follow:

  1. Treat growth episodes with caution. Strong economic indicators should not crowd out other measures of social well-being and political legitimacy. The low life-satisfaction scores in MENA before the Arab Spring were an early warning that many ignored.
  2. Embrace transparency. Open discussion of governance failures is far healthier than denial. Acknowledging problems does not undermine growth; suppressing them often does.
  3. Use periods of prosperity to undertake governance reforms. Every reform creates winners and losers. Growth generates resources that can help compensate those who bear the costs. Good times are therefore the best times—not the worst—to address governance weaknesses.

The central lesson is simple: governance problems do not disappear during periods of rapid growth. Ignoring them merely postpones the reckoning. In many countries, the cost of that denial has been measured in lost growth, political instability, and, in the worst cases, violent conflict.

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