The Heat and the Fury: On the Frontlines of Climate Violence

How and why is climate change contributing to violence? What might climate stresses mean for global stability? And in a rapidly warming world, what can be done to stifle the threat of worse hostilities down the line? During his talk on September 25, Peter Schwartzstein will explore the big questions surrounding this quickly intensifying kind of conflict.

As a journalist on the climate security beat, Schwartzstein has spent more than a decade documenting how climate stresses are bleeding into violence large and small, including ISIS's exploitation of collapsing agricultural conditions to bolster its ranks in Iraq and the impact of rising seas levels on Bangladeshi piracy.

By articulating the stories of the farmers, fighters, and regular families in the eye of this storm, Schwartzstein will clarify the stakes as violence proliferates, but also the hope and prospects for peace if temperatures are reined in. He will touch on many of the key themes and stories from his upcoming book The Heat and the Fury: On the Frontlines of Climate Violence, the first in-depth exploration of climate-related violence for the general reader.

BIO

Peter Schwartzstein is an award-winning British-American journalist and researcher who has reported on water, food security, and particularly the conflict-climate nexus across more than 30 countries in the Middle East, Africa, and occasionally further afield. He mostly writes for National Geographic, but his work also regularly appears in the New York Times, BBC, Foreign Affairs, and many other outlets. He is a global fellow with the Wilson Center's Environmental Change and Security Program, a TED fellow, and a fellow at the Center for Climate and Security. Based in Athens, Greece, he consults for a range of United Nations agencies and nongovernmental organizations. The Heat and the Fury is his first book.

The Environmental Institutions Seminar Series is presented by the Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & Sustainability and the University Program in Environmental Policy, a doctoral degree program jointly offered by the Nicholas School of the Environment and Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University. This installment of the series is also presented in partnership with the Triangle Institute for Security Studies and with the Duke Human Rights Center at Duke University's Franklin Humanities Institute.