Environmental Recovery and Resistance Amid War

Despite the destruction, there are glimpses of environmental resilience—and even resistance—in the midst of the Middle East’s war-torn landscapes. Civil society groups, environmental activists, and local communities are stepping in where governments and militaries fail, finding creative ways to protect and restore ecological systems even under fire.

In Gaza, local farmers and permaculture advocates are experimenting with rooftop gardens and compost toilets to reclaim some degree of ecological agency. These innovations are not just survival tools but political acts—refusing to let militarized blockade and bombardment fully sever the people from the land. Palestinian environmental NGOs, though chronically underfunded, have documented soil degradation, sea pollution, and agricultural damage, not merely to track destruction but to plan eventual regeneration.

Israel, too, has seen a surge of environmental mobilization in war-affected areas. Organizations like the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel (SPNI) have worked to restore damaged reserves, monitor air quality, and advocate for environmental protections even amid ongoing security threats. The same forest that burns during war must be replanted in peace, and that labor—of patience, of re-rooting—is often carried out quietly by volunteers, schoolchildren, and ecologists working across religious and political lines.

But these localized efforts are swimming against a rising tide. Regional militarization—including Iran’s drone and missile programs, Saudi Arabia’s oil-driven geopolitics, and U.S. weapons sales—diverts funding, attention, and innovation away from climate resilience and toward endless security cycles. In a region already facing desertification, drought, and extreme heat due to climate change, war acts as an accelerant, stripping resources and destabilizing governance just when climate cooperation is most needed.

There’s a cruel irony here: the countries most in need of climate adaptation—Lebanon with its failing power grid, Syria with its drought-ravaged farms, Gaza with its water crisis—are the ones least able to invest in it. War not only destroys the present, but mortgages the future. When olive trees are uprooted, aquifers drained, and rivers diverted for military advantage, it is not just ecology that suffers—it is culture, livelihood, and intergenerational memory.

Still, seeds can grow even in rubble. Peace, when it comes, must include ecological restoration as a core pillar—not an afterthought. Rebuilding homes and economies will not be enough. The land must be healed alongside the people, and that healing must be transboundary, slow, and rooted in justice. For in the Middle East, as elsewhere, survival is not just political—it is ecological.