EcoPeace Middle East

EcoPeace Middle East was established in 1994 by a group of local environmental nongovernmental organizations that saw the critical need for Jordan, Palestine, and Israel to incorporate environmental considerations into regional development and policy plans. With evidence that people and wildlife in the region are all dependent on many of the same limited natural resources, including water, the group identified essential ecosystems – such as the Dead Sea and Jordan River Basin – that will not survive without international cooperation in sustainable planning and development.

With offices located in each of the three nations, EcoPeace Middle East engages in a two-fold approach: a "bottom-up" approach emphasizing grassroots projects meets a "top-down" approach emphasizing policy level advocacy. EcoPeace applies this approach in three categories: those which focus on particular geographic regions, those that address the intersections between environmentalism and socio-economic issues, and those that generate local solutions to the consequences of climate change. Through this work, EcoPeace Middle East champions environmental peacebuilding in Jordan, Palestine, and Israel. Their model has been so successful that it is being replicated in other water-related conflict zones across the globe.