Author: Nima Shokri, Executive Co-Director, Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH), United Nations University; Technical University of Hamburg

For several decades, Iran has devoted substantial financial, institutional and political resources to military expansion. It has invested heavily in supporting its regional partners, as well as in pursuing geopolitical influence across the Middle East. Previously, the Islamic Republic has shown few signs of swivelling its resources toward fixing its ever expanding environmental problems. And […]

The Caspian Sea, the largest inland body of water on Earth, is shrinking. Not fluctuating, not entering another natural cycle, but shrinking. For decades, scientists and policymakers treated changes in the Caspian as part of the basin’s natural variability. Water levels in the sea have always risen and fallen. But our new study shows something […]

The Strait of Hormuz – the narrow waterway through which between 20% and 25% of the world’s seaborne oil normally passes – has been effectively closed for just over two months. As tensions have escalated, Iran has restricted passage through the Strait, while the US has imposed a naval blockade on Iranian shipping, sharply limiting […]