War’s Environmental Fallout: U.N. Expert Decries Targeting of Oil Sites & Desalination Plants

We take a look at how war in the Middle East is impacting the environment in “one of the most water-stressed regions in the world,” with Kaveh Madani, the renowned U.N. scientist, former Iranian politician and recipient of the 2026 Stockholm Water Prize. Madani discusses threats to civil water infrastructure in the Gulf region, how the Strait of Hormuz crisis highlights consumer countries’ overreliance on oil and gas, and his prize-winning work on the global effects of “water bankruptcy.” Madani ties the antiwar and climate struggles together and calls for wider popular resistance to the long-term environmental harms of global warfare. “All the weapons that have been produced have had carbon footprints — the missiles that fly, the jets, the tanks that are burned, the oil fields that are being attacked and the gas fields that are being burned. All of these are producing a lot of greenhouse gas emissions,” he says. “They are going to impact us in the long term.”