Lyse Mauvais

Environmental journalist

Lyse is a freelance environmental journalist. She was based for four years in the MENA region, where she reported from Iraq, Syria, Jordan and Palestine on a wide range of social and environmental issues.

Her work focuses on the intersection between conflict and nature, including the toxic fallout of wars, resource plundering during/after conflicts, how economic crises fuel poaching and wildlife trafficking, and interactions between climate change, agriculture and livelihoods.

Nominated for the 2022 Livingston Award and shortlisted for the 2023 True Story Award, her work has appeared in various MENA-oriented outlets including Al Jazeera, The New Arab, Middle East Eye & Al Monitor, as well as specialized environmental outlets including Mongabay and DeSmog. She also works as a freelance researcher for environmental organizations and think tanks.

Portfolio

People

Al-Monitor: The Middle Eastʼs leading independent news source since 2012
Iraq's war-battered cities grapple with rising resistance to antibiotics

Six years after the liberation of Mosul from the Islamic State, the city battles a silent enemy: abnormally high rates of multidrug-resistant infections. It's a phenomenon fueled by decades of war that poses a massive threat to global health.

Mongabay Environmental News
08/10/2023
Falcon trafficking soars in Middle East, fueled by conflict and poverty

ZARQA GOVERNORATE, Jordan; ERBIL, Iraq; QAMISHLI, Syria - In the darkness of a small, windowless room, half a dozen falcons were perched on low wooden stools, their eyes covered with leather hoods. Crouching on the sand-covered floor, their caretaker gently unhooded some of the birds, which stretched their wings cautiously.

Syria Direct
07/05/2023
The Hope to Return: Podcast Miniseries - Syria Direct

"The Hope to Return" follows three families displaced from Ras al-Ain and its countryside in 2019 by Operation Peace Spring, a military offensive launched by Turkey and Turkish-backed military groups in northern Syria.

Land

Al-Monitor: The Middle Eastʼs leading independent news source since 2012
Syrian farmers trapped by 'Erdogan's wall'

Military unrest combined with drought is making it much harder to draw a living from the soil along the Turkish-Syrian border.

Untold Mag
03/22/2024
Syria's forests are vanishing - Untold

Across Syria, natural forests are vanishing at an alarming rate. Fueled by seasonal wildfires and unregulated logging, a seemingly endless cycle of deforestation has set in.

Water

Mongabay Environmental News
05/30/2024
From Egypt to Syria, 'water cancer' chokes waterways

AL-LANI, Syria and KAFR-EL-SHEIKH, Egypt - On the banks of Syria's Orontes River, a beautiful flower has become a nightmare. Each spring, it creeps out of the soft mud that sheltered its seeds in winter, quickly overtaking the banks. In a matter of days, the plants sprawl across the shallowest parts of the river.

Synaps
Death on the Nile

Egypt's Nile Delta is home to more than 40 million people, and much of the country's food production. Increasingly, though, its farmers struggle even to feed themselves. دلتا النيل في مصر موطن لأكثر من 40 مليون نسمة، وتنتج جلّ غذاء البلاد، لكن المزارعين فيها بالكاد يستطيعون اليوم إطعام أنفسهم.

Climate

DeSmog
10/31/2024
How Saudi Arabia's Neom Giga Project Became a Global Showroom of False Climate Solutions

Neom was launched in 2017 with a whirlwind of promises. The 26,500 square-kilometre "futuristic" giga project is the brainchild of Saudi Arabia, a fossil fuel state that has pitched Neom as a "revolution in civilisation". Neom's crown jewel, The Line, is a linear city that the kingdom claims will be serviced by high-speed trains and [...]