Review of Peter Schwartzstein, The Heat and the Fury: On the Frontlines of Climate Violence (London: Footnote Press, 2024).
Munich, Germany (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) –– Although climate change does not directly cause conflict, it makes violence more likely to occur and to be more intense. The effects of climate change act as ‘threat multipliers’ that intensify already-existing conflict patterns. The link between climate change and conflict is by now well-established, but most explorations of this connection are found in academic studies that are likely to come off as dull to the general public.
A far livelier account of this problematic link is on offer in Peter Schwartzstein’s recently published book, “The Heat and the Fury: On the Frontlines of Climate Violence”. Schwartzstein is a journalist and a non-resident research fellow at the Center for Climate & Security in Washington DC. His book incorporates the scientific research on the climate change/conflict nexus but largely relies on Schwartzstein’s years-long experience reporting from, as he puts it, “the frontlines of climate violence.”
Climate change has displaced old certainties, challenging inter-generational knowledge and traditional structures of authority. In Boki Saboudo, in north-eastern Senegal, Schwartzstein comes across Idrissa Ba, the village chief. His position makes him the person local herders traditionally approach for counsel, an increasingly complicated task these days. As Ba explains to the author, “You start to question if what you know is still useful”, adding that “the climate is not normal. The rains are not normal.”[1]
Highly fluctuating precipitation patterns have brought more years of weak rains, forcing pastoralists to leave depleted pastures earlier on in the year and move to the areas inhabited by farmers when they are still completing the harvest. The farmers used to welcome the cattle as natural fertilizers and allowed them to eat from the fields. With the arrival of artificial fertilizers into traditional agriculture and smaller crop yields due to irregular rains, the cohabitation between pastoralists and farmers often collapses and the cattle go hungry. As Schwartzstein explains, jihadi groups in the Sahel have profited from this hopelessness, recruiting over-proportionally among herders.
If climate change is a ‘threat multiplier’, this is partly because it acts as an accelerator of long-running inequalities in wealth and political power. The World Economic Forum notes that “the lowest income countries produce one-tenth of emissions but are the most heavily impacted by climate change.” Schwartzstein offers a good example of this dynamic in his chapter on Sudan, a country responsible for only 0.06% of global CO₂ emissions. Sudanese villagers have suffered displacement or been left without water for agriculture as Gulf countries heavily invest in major farming exploitations in Sudan after filling their coffers with the export of polluting fossil fuels.
Within the nations most affected by climate change, the costs are also unevenly distributed. The chapter in “The Heat and the Fury” dedicated to Nepal and its water crisis shows this clearly. As subsistence agriculture falters in Nepal as a consequence of climate change, more Nepalis are abandoning mountainous rural areas to search for a job in the capital, Kathmandu. These internal migrants often end up in the city’s slums, which the state has not properly connected to the water grid.
As Schwartzstein reports, when the dry season comes, these neighborhoods are dependent on the ‘tanker men’, who distribute water at great expense and push many buyers into debt. The ‘tanker men’ can go to great lengths to defend their business model. It is common for them to reach deals with corrupt officials to prevent water pipelines from flowing into the areas where they sell their product. In these conditions of weakened state power, the internal migrants’ misery becomes the fortune of unscrupulous businessmen and officials. A couple who lives in Kathmandu’s slums and depends on the ‘tanker men’ for potable water tells the author: “Whatever it costs, we pay. We have no choice”.[2] Not everyone approaches the situation with this resignation, however, as some state water employees have been beaten up in the city’s slums.
Schwartzstein covers some relatively well-known cases, such as the environmental roots of ISIS expansion in Iraq. Other stories, however, will certainly come as a surprise to most readers. One of them is the chapter dedicated to the pirates of the Bangladeshi Sundarbans. Located between eastern India and southwestern Bangladesh, the Sundarbans are a mangrove forest area in the Ganges Delta that spans 10,000 km2 (3,900 sq mi), making it the largest mangrove forest in the world. In the Sundarbans, climate change has brought rises in the sea level and diminishing river flows that damage agricultural activities.
As a result, some farmers are trying their luck as fishermen and honey collectors in the waters of the Sundarbans. Once there, they risk getting lost in the confusing vastness of trees and water or falling prey to the jaladoshyu, as the pirates are referred to locally. These bands of pirates are made of long-time criminals, but also of some former fishermen or farmers fleeing mountains of debt. The jaladoshyu make money with the poaching of the endangered Bengal tiger or the kidnapping of unlucky fishermen. In a gruesome practice, the kidnapped fishermen are sometimes mutilated to add further pressure on the relatives asked to collect the ransom money. The infamous Master Bahini (Master Group) pirate gang is reported to have had yearly earnings of about 60 million Taka ($732,000). For comparison, the average monthly salary for a worker in a textile factory in Bangladesh is 8,300 taka ($75).
Peter Schwartzstein The Heat and the Fury. Click here to Buy.
Richer countries have so far been comparatively isolated from the worst climate impacts, but this is starting to change. And despite these countries being better endowed with the kind of economic and infrastructural resources that are key to countering the effects of climate change, they might be in for a rude awakening. Schwartzstein mentions the work of scholars who argue, somewhat counterintuitively, that it might be in rich countries where governments will have more difficulties maintaining social peace in times of catastrophic climate change. As the author writes, “Popular frustration with government frequently peaks when officials fail to deliver services to which citizens have grown accustomed. If that is the case in the West, we, with our generally strong senses of entitlement, might be in for an awful lot of bother.”[3]
Oxfam International notes that rich countries greatly overstate the climate finance they provide to poorer countries. Although $116 billion in climate finance was announced in 2022, most of these funds came in the form of loans at profitable market rates. The ‘true value’ of climate finance provided by rich countries in 2022 was actually between $28 billion and $35 billion according to Oxfam estimates. And these values are probably going to decrease in the coming years. Last year, the US provided around 8% of global climate finance funds. US President Donald Trump, who withdrew his country from the Paris climate agreement for a second time after he returned to office in January 2025, has halted much of the funding to USAID. This government agency, responsible for overseas aid, provides about a third of US climate finance. Washington also recently canceled $4 billion in US pledges to the Green Climate Fund, the world’s largest climate fund.
Europe, immersed in plans for an increase in defense expenditure, is highly unlikely to make up for the decrease in US contributions to climate finance. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced in November 2024 that his new government would be “renewing UK climate leadership.” Two weeks ago, however, Starmer announced he is planning to fund the expansion of the British military budget by implementing cuts of over £6 billion ($7 billion) a year. It is unclear what will happen with UK climate finance when the cuts enter into force in 2027. London’s future loss of influence in climate negotiations due to the aid cuts was one of the aspects mentioned by Anneliese Dodds in her resignation letter as Britain’s international development minister.
It might amount to little consolation in times of major cuts in aid for climate change mitigation, but some of the successes in environmental peacebuilding Schwartzstein mentions in the book are inexpensive. Environmental peacebuilding refers to cooperation on environmental issues between distinct social groups that leads to more peaceful relations. Schwartzstein describes a successful example of environmental peacebuilding in northern Senegal, in one of the areas with recurrent conflicts between herders and farmers. In the case Schwartzstein documents, a herder had killed another herder during a dispute for scarce pasture. An international NGO with a strong local presence intervened in the conflict by assembling representatives from the different villages in the area after they had been chosen by their respective communities. These representatives convened and managed to agree on rules about maximum herd numbers and appropriate compensation in case of rule breaches.
To be sure, the core problem these communities are facing, namely the irregular rains that lead to depleted pastures, remains unsolved. But these environmental peacebuilding efforts, explains Schwartzstein, have expanded in the Sahel and contributed to a decrease in violence. The key, he notes, is that most of these projects are “led by locals and so are more in tune with the needs and desires of the intended recipients than are many interventions from on high.”[4]
“The Heat and the Fury” is Schwartzstein’s first book. Given his skillful combination of personal anecdote, factual analysis, and impressive on-the-ground reporting, we can only hope more books are to come.
[1] Peter Schwartzstein, The Heat and the Fury: On the Frontlines of Climate Violence (London: Footnote Press, 2024), p. 151.
[2] Ibid., p. 124.
[3] Ibid., p. 229.
[4] Ibid., p. 270.
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