The Middle East is the birthplace of Western civilization. Here, in the wake of the last ice age some ten millennia ago, humans first made the fateful transition from nomadic hunting and gathering to settled farming or transhumant herding of livestock. Here they first domesticated plants and animals, tilled and irrigated fields and orchards, established villages and cities, built temples and monuments, and organized nation states that grew into empires. Here they invented ceramics, metallurgy, mathematics, and writing. And here they conceived ethical ideals and codified them into laws. As the region subject to the longest period of continuous human exploitation, the Middle East contains much evidence regarding the sustainability or unsustainability of alternative management systems in a vulnerable environment. The part of the region known as the Fertile Crescent was originally a hospitable environment, blessed with a benign climate and abundant biological resources. Now this same region is a largely degraded landscape in which many of the people are impoverished and insecure. The fabulous wealth of the few who control the region's petroleum resources contrasts most vividly with the poor lot of the many who still live on the land or who are driven off it into overcrowded cities. The manifestations of the wounded environment include widespread destruction of vegetation and natural habitats, erosion of uplands and watersheds, water-logging and salination of river valleys, desertification of semiarid areas, and - in particular - depletion and pollution of water resources. Combined with an uncontrolled explosion of population, these processes undermine the economic and social welfare of entire societies. Environmental degradation thus contributes to social instability and despair. There are, however, positive prospects for improving the efficiency and sustainability of soil and water management, to which the international community can and should contribute expertise and investment.