Already facing water stress, much of Latin America (such as the western slopes of the Andes and the dry corridor of Central America) is projected to experience intensified periods of drought in the coming decades, further complicating development efforts in the region. At the same time, heavy floods are the most common natural disaster in the region, disrupting life for countless people. According to the World Bank, in Latin America and the Caribbean alone roughly $14 billion per year is required to meet the 2030 water and sanitation targets of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Typically, investments at this scale have been made by governments and large firms that invest in traditional infrastructure such as dams. But with ever-growing development needs and increased understanding of the impacts of climate change, Nature-based Solutions (NBS) are gaining momentum as a new way of incorporating environmental considerations into development responses.

The Hariyo Ban Program is one of the best examples of a sustainable development initiative that I’ve ever seen, said Nik Sekhran, Chief Conservation Officer of the World Wildlife Fund-US during a recent Wilson Center event on lessons learned from a decade of building resilience through participatory and inclusive natural resource management, climate adaptation, and biodiversity conservation in Nepal.

“If solar radiation management were done well—that is, the science is right, the engineering is right, and the policy and governance frameworks around all of the stuff work—then solar radiation management could be a really important, positive contribution to humanity’s responding to climate change,” says Simon Nicholson, associate professor at American University’s School of International Service and co-founder of the Forum for Climate Engineering Assessment in this week’s Friday Podcast interview with ECSP senior advisor and Ohio University professor, Geoff Dabelko. “But, there are all kinds of risks associated with this endeavor.”

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, communities across the globe are experiencing unprecedented climate disasters.

According to modeling by ProPublica, the Pulitzer Center, and The New York Times Magazine, in the event that governments take “modest action to reduce climate emissions, about 680,000 climate migrants might move from Central America and Mexico to the United States by 2050.” That number leaps to above a million people in a scenario where no action is taken. The impacts of climate change on people’s decision to move are not constrained to the developing world, or even across borders. A recent study found that one in 12 Americans currently residing in the southern U.S. will move to California and the Northwest over the next 45 years because of climate influences.

“We all know that while no one is immune from the Covid-19 virus—and people of all types have caught the virus and died from it—it is the world’s most vulnerable communities that have suffered disproportionately from the pandemic,” said Michael Kugelman, Deputy Director and Senior Associate for the Wilson Center’s Asia Program. He spoke at a recent Wilson Center event on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on refugee communities. As of 2019, 1 percent of humanity was displaced. That’s more than 79.5 million people. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the vulnerabilities of these people. “The health pandemic is fostering a new pandemic of poverty,” said Matthew Reynolds, Regional Representative for the U.S. and the Caribbean at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

The global coronavirus pandemic, now in its third month, is precipitating a financial crisis for water utilities in low- and middle-income countries as many of these service providers face drastic cuts in revenue and rising costs to respond to the public health emergency.

At an event organized by the Coalition of Atoll Nations on Climate Change in December 2019, Tabitha Awerika, 21, from Kiribati, urged world leaders to listen to the climate science and to the pleas of those living in the South Pacific. “I will not leave the lands of my ancestors,” she said. “I will not abandon my motherland. I refuse to leave the only place I call home.”

In the Global South, climate change-induced resettlement requires a holistic and integrated approach, involving all stakeholders—state institutions, local customary and civil society institutions—and in particular respectful engagement with local traditional actors and networks. In a policy brief for the Toda Peace Institute, we examined climate change-induced resettlement from the Carteret Islands in the Pacific, a case which encompasses a broad range of issues relevant to future relocation efforts elsewhere. Those who seek to make this type of resettlement possible would do well to heed these lessons.