This paper will explore how the interaction between natural resource mismanagement, poor governance, and projected changes in climate can undermine social and political stability in the Middle East. The paper focuses on the cases of Syria and Jordan. In Syria, the government’s mismanagement of water and soil resources, particularly in the country’s northeastern provinces of Al-Hasakah, Ar-Raqqah, and Deir Az-Zour, caused high levels of popular discontent that contributed to the outbreak of social unrest in March 2011. Local and national government officials’ toleration of, and support for, the overexploitation of groundwater resources, irrigation practices that increased soil salinity, and rampant overgrazing of animal pastures combined with severe drought to cause great ecological damage to rural areas in northeastern Syria. In response, nearly one million people migrated from their villages and towns in the northeast to the cities of Deir Az-Zour, Dar’a, Aleppo, Homs, and Damascus during the late 2000s. All of these events combined to create a “powder keg” of social and political discontent in Syria that exploded in March 2011. The paper’s second case study is the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. While Jordan has not experienced the social, political, or ecological turmoil that occurred in Syria during the 2000s, trends similar to those in Syria are occurring. Groundwater resources are being exploited at unsustainable rates to supply both rural and urban water users, and soil resources are being degraded by a combination of overgrazing and increasing evapotranspiration. Decreased soil moisture has in turn led to increased pumping of groundwater from both renewable and non-renewable aquifers. The paper will explain the potential for the unsustainable use of groundwater and increasing water scarcity in rural areas to exacerbate ongoing social and political instability set in motion by the 2011 Arab Spring. The paper is the product of two years of research including two field trips to Jordan in 2012 and 2013. During this field research personal interviews were conducted with Jordanian water experts, environmentalists, agricultural policy experts, and journalists. No field research was conducted in Syria. Data sources for the Syrian case include official statistics and reports on the agricultural sector, reports from international agencies and organizations such as the International Crisis Group and the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization, media reports, and scholarly research on the politics of water in Syria.