Shaheen stretched out on the sand and closed his eyes, but there was little time to rest for the camel. World Cup fans coming in droves to the desert outside Doha were ready for their perfect Instagram moment: riding a camel on the rolling dunes.

As Qatar welcomes more than a million fans for the monthlong World Cup, even its camels are working overtime. Visitors in numbers the tiny emirate has never before seen are rushing to finish a bucket list of Gulf tourist experiences between games: ride on a camel's back, take pictures with falcons and wander through the alleyways of traditional markets.

Abbas Hashem fixed his worried gaze on the horizon — the day was almost gone and still, there was no sign of the last of his water buffaloes. He knows that when his animals don't come back from roaming the marshes of this part of Iraq, they must be dead.

The dry earth is cracked beneath his feet and thick layers of salt coat shriveled reeds in the Chibayish wetlands amid this year's dire shortages in fresh water flows from the Tigris River.

Lina Ghotmeh has pegged her career on sustainable construction.

The French-Lebanese architect wants to see her industry transformed by drastically reducing the use of concrete -- a major CO2 contributor -- using more local materials and reusing existing buildings and materials.

In conflict-ravaged nations like Yemen and Somalia, devastating floods and droughts kill hundreds of people and uproot tens of thousands from their homes.

These countries and many others in the Middle East and Africa have been plunged into turmoil and wars for several years. Now climate change is an added disaster for those already struggling for survival.

Barcelona and large swathes of Spain's northeast are going under water restrictions as a months-long drought that has devastated crops starts to put the pinch on human activities in the Mediterranean country.

The measures will affect 6.7 million people, 80% of the population in the Catalonia region, Patrícia Plaja, spokeswoman for the Catalan administration, said. Plaja said, for now, it will not be necessary to limit of the use of water inside homes for washing, cooking or drinking, but her government urged citizens to "be aware the exceptional situation the country is facing."

Heavy rains in the Saudi coastal city of Jeddah on Thursday delayed flights, forced school suspensions and closed the road to Mecca, Islam's holiest city, state media reported. 

Schoolchildren in the Iranian capital Tehran were told to stay home on Wednesday because of a spike in air pollution levels in the metropolis of more than nine million people.

Teenage climate activists in Nigeria's largest city are recycling trash into runway outfits for a "Trashion Show."

Chinedu Mogbo, founder of Greenfingers Wildlife Initiative, a conservation group working with the activists, said the show was designed to raise awareness about environmental pollution.

An impassioned plea for climate justice and compensation for vulnerable nations from a 10-year-old Ghanaian activist moved staid and stalled diplomats to their feet Friday.

Nakeeyat Dramani Sam scolded delegates at this year's U.N. climate talks, saying they would act faster to rein in global warming if they were her age.

Next year, the water will come. The pipes have been laid to Ata Yigit's sprawling farm in Turkey's southeast connecting it to a dam on the Euphrates River. A dream, soon to become a reality, he says.

He's already grown a small corn patch on some of the water. The golden stalks are tall and abundant. "The kernels are big," he says, proudly. Soon he'll be able to water all his fields.