In 1990, the U.S. Congress passed the Global Change Research Act “to assist the Nation and the world to understand, assess, predict, and respond to human-induced and natural processes of global change.” Under this mandate, the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) was born, an innovative, cross-cutting research initiative that brings together the science arms of 13 federal agencies working on global change issues, including the Departments of Agriculture, Interior, Energy, Defense, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and others.

“Climate change and food insecurity are the twin crises that may define Africa’s future,” said the World Bank’s Ademola Braimoh at the Wilson Center on September 13. One proposed solution is so-called “climate-smart agriculture” (CSA), an approach to farming that aims to mitigate the negative impacts of climate change while increasing agricultural production and income. But according to a panel of experts, smallholder farmers around the world have either been slow to adopt CSA practices or failed to sustain their usage over time.

The United Nations has made significant progress since the Stockholm Conference of 1972 in putting the environment on the global agenda. Indeed, the environment plays a major role in two of the largest UN initiatives today: the Paris climate accord and the Sustainable Development Goals. But in a new brief for the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Foundation, Wilson Center Fellow Ken Conca writes that the traditional approach to environmental issues is running up against its limits.

As the remains of nearly 60 buses smoldered at a depot in Bangalore, the “Silicon Valley” of India, protestors chanted, “We will give blood, but not Cauvery!” Downstream, in neighboring Chennai, at least 100 vehicles have been damaged, more than 500 people have been arrested, and a 25-year old died after setting himself on fire in protest.

Over the course of 1,800 miles, 5,300 vertical feet, and at least five name changes, the Brahmaputra River, in sometimes turbulent outbursts, flows from the Tibetan plateau to the Bay of Bengal. Along the way, it crosses three countries, including major geopolitical rivals China and India, and supplies 90 percent of downstream Bangladesh’s freshwater during the dry season.

Yesterday afternoon President Obama announced a new Presidential Memorandum on climate change and national security. The policy directs 20 federal agencies to consider the national security implications of climate change and establish a working group that will develop a Climate Change and National Security Action Plan for the federal government.

Accurate measurements of wealth are useful for developing more targeted and effective poverty reduction programs. Unfortunately, such metrics are few and far between, as data on economic livelihoods tends to be expensive to obtain, and once collected, is often unreliable.

Although separated by a thousand miles, the women of the Malaysian state of Sarawak and the Filipino island of Mindoro are united by a major struggle: climate change. As rainfall patterns grow increasingly unpredictable, natural disasters become more frequent, and drought ravages once-arable land, women are on the frontlines in both communities.