Peter
Schwartzstein

Enviro journalist & researcher, think tanker @ The Wilson Center & @ Center for Climate & Security, Author of 'The Heat and the Fury: On the Frontlines of Climate Violence'

@pschwartzstein

Latest Stories

Mediterranean Dialogue/EU 

Mar 3, 2021

Environmental Activism along
a Warming Mediterranean.

Forging Regional Engagement at a Time of Climate Crises

BBC 

Feb 26, 2021

The return of a once-dying lake

Lake Urmia in Iran was once the world's second largest salt lake, but in a matter of years it shrank to almost nothing. Now, the lake is slowly coming back to life.

Center for Climate & Security 

Feb 26, 2021

Why Water Conflict is Rising, Especially on the Local Level

​That future wars will be fought over water, rather than oil, has become something of a truism, particularly with regard to the Middle East. It’s also one that most water experts have refuted

Politico 

Feb 8, 2021

Mediterranean fishermen face perfect storm as tensions and temperatures rise

Climate change and geopolitical troubles make fishing an ever more difficult business.

New Security Beat 

Jan 12, 2021

How We Misunderstand the Magnitude of Climate Risks – and Why That Contributes to Controversy

The Syrian civil war has raged for almost a decade now, and in the climate security community it can feel as if we’ve spent at least that long arguing about its causes. For every claim about the impact…

The Century Foundation 

Dec 15, 2020

Bringing the Natural World into America’s Middle East Policy: Averting a Crisis Foretold

​Today, the Middle East faces a severe security concern that is crystalizing in plain view: the human impact of a rapidly changing natural world.

The region, home to some of the world’s…

National Geographic 

Nov 12, 2020

How Iran is destroying its once thriving environmental movement

Iran once boasted one of the greenest governments. But persecution, paranoia, and war have sunk the Middle East’s most vital conservation programs.

Center for Climate & Security 

Jul 16, 2020

Why the Nile Constitutes a New Kind of Water Dispute – and Why That’s Dangerous

​Ever since workers first broke ground on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) in 2011, international commenters have fixated on the Nile as a possible harbinger of future

The Century Foundation 

Jul 7, 2020

The Authoritarian War on Environmental Journalism

In recent years, journalists in Egypt have fallen afoul of the state while covering almost every environmental issue imaginable. One reporter was