[7] In 2019, Boris Mints Institute of Tel Aviv University awarded Gleick its annual BMI Prize as "an exceptional individual who has devoted his/her research and academic life to the solution of a strategic global challenge.

[19] In 2003, he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship for his work on water resources,[citation needed] and in 2006 he was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.

[20][21] In 2011, Gleick received the International Water Resources Association (IWRA) Ven Te Chow Memorial Award.

[citation needed] Peter Gleick's research addresses the cross-disciplinary connections among global environmental issues, with a focus on freshwater and climate change.

In 1987, with two colleagues, Gleick started the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security, an independent non-profit policy research center currently located in Oakland, California.

[39] Gleick’s Ph.D dissertation from the University of California, Berkeley, and his early research, focused on the impacts of human-caused climate change for freshwater resources.

Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) which coordinates a team of experts and receives input from a Federal Advisory Committee.

As a post-doctoral fellow in 1987 and 1988 at the University of California, Berkeley, Gleick published some of the earliest work addressing the risks of environmental factors for national and international security, including both climate change and water resources.

Up until this time, most academic work on international security was linked to realpolitik and superpower relationships between the United States and the Soviet Union.

[52] This database goes back nearly 6,000 years, with over 1600 entries identifying where water resources or systems have been the trigger, casualty, or weapon of violence.

This work has been recognized by military and intelligence community analysts and Gleick has briefed political military leaders and lectured at the U.S. Army War College and National War College in Washington D.C.[53] Gleick also did some of the earliest work defining a human right to water.

Two early efforts to define the human right to water came from law professor Stephen McCaffrey of the University of the Pacific in 1992[54] and Gleick in 1998.

[60] The Pacific Institute contributed legal testimony for this case based on the work of Dr. Peter Gleick and the work of the Centre for Applied Legal Studies (CALS) of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa and the Pacific Institute in Oakland, California was acknowledged with a 2008 Business Ethics Network BENNY Award.

[63] He serves as a major source of information on water and climate issues for the media, and has been featured on CNBC, CNN, Fox Business, Fresh Air with Terry Gross,[64] NPR, in articles in The New Yorker,[65] and many other outlets.

[68] In September 2014, Gleick gave a keynote address at the "Global Climate Negotiations: Lessons from California" Symposium, co-hosted by the USC Schwarzenegger Institute with the California Air Resources Board and the R20 Regions of Climate Action (R20) in Sacramento, which highlighted the different policies applied by the state of California facing the impact of climate change.,[69][70] In February 2015, Gleick's work on the "Water-Energy Nexus" was highlighted in an invited keynote at the Georgetown University 2015 Annual Symposium of the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies.

He stated that "My judgment was blinded by my frustration with the ongoing efforts – often anonymous, well-funded, and coordinated – to attack climate science and scientists and prevent this debate, and by the lack of transparency of the organizations involved.