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

The Atlantic 

Mar 30, 2019

The Middle East’s Authoritarians Have Come for Conservationists

Environmental activists pushing for clean water, restrictions on poaching, and action on climate change have faced prison—or worse

Atlantic Community 

Mar 5, 2019

The Brewing Storm: Climate Security Risks in a Fast-Warming North Africa

North Africa is by most measures already an exceedingly hostile environment. It has relatively little arable land, next to no rainfall beyond the narrow coastal strip, and extreme temperature highs,…

Smithsonian 

Feb 13, 2019

The History of Poisoning the Well

From ancient Mesopotamia to modern-day Iraq, the threat to a region’s water supply is the cruelest cut of all

National Geographic 

Jan 25, 2019

Drought turns part of Iran into a new dust bowl

In this corner of the Middle East, a changing climate and debilitating dust storms have brought life to a standstill.

The National 

Jan 16, 2019

The slow crawl towards water disaster

From drought to dam dramas, the Middle East continued its grim water trajectory in 2018

UN Environment 

Dec 19, 2018

Cleaning up after ISIS: how Iraq’s new chemicals team is trying to undo years of conflict pollution

At the precise moment when ISIS fighters were prepping for their retreat from the Iraqi city of Ramadi in February 2016, Hassan Mohammed lay in bed struggling to breathe.

For nine months, through…

Amnesty International 

Dec 13, 2018

IRAQ: DEAD LAND: ISLAMIC STATE'S DELIBERATE DESTRUCTION OF IRAQ'S FARMLAND

One year after Iraq declared military victory over the armed group calling itself Islamic State (IS) our report finds that IS’s deliberate destruction of Iraq’s rural environment continues to have…

National Geographic 

Nov 21, 2018

Pirates are killing Bengal tigers

In the mangroves of Bangladesh, pirates are usurping tigers in one of their last refuges.

Center for Climate & Security 

Oct 1, 2018

How a Metastasizing Food Crisis Threatens Sudan’s Stability: A Dispatch from Khartoum

At 10am on a midweek summer morning, the village of Hasa in Sudan’s River Nile state feels all but abandoned. Stray dogs idle in the shade; vultures peck at what remains of a cow carcass. Only in…