Speaker: Peter Schwartstein

Join us for an engaging discussion of the book The Heat and the Fury: On the Frontlines of Climate Violence, where we’ll explore how climate change is exacerbating global conflicts and driving violence in some of the world’s most vulnerable regions.

The book offers a powerful, ground-level examination of how climate change directly fuels violence, drawing on over a decade of reporting from conflict zones and communities at the intersection of environmental stress and instability. Through the eyes of farmers, fighters, and families, the book reveals how extreme weather, resource scarcity, and climate disruptions act as catalysts for conflict, while also exploring how these environmental pressures interact with social and political tensions. This work is not just a call to action for the general reader but a crucial resource for climate security scholars and practitioners.

This event is part of the Conflict, Security & Development speakers series in the Department of War Studies.

About the speaker

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 thirty countries in the Middle East, Africa, and occasionally further afield.

Peter 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 UN agencies and iNGOs. The Heat and the Fury is his first book.

Chair

The discussion will be chaired by Dr Christine Cheng, a Senior Lecturer at the Department of War Studies. Her research expertise lies in global security, statebuilding, and state failure, particularly in post-conflict environments.