“In the movement toward complex solutions, at the heart of it all we’re talking about individuals with their own complex issues as they are moving through different scenarios,” said Shanna McClain, Disasters Program Manager with the National Atmospheric and Space Administration, at last month’s International Conference on Environmental Peacebuilding. The panel discussion, “Resource Implications of Human Mobility and Migration,” focused on what data shows—and doesn’t show—are the complex linkages between climate, conflict, and mobility. Panelists discussed how more integrated programming and policy actions are needed to make migration safe, orderly, and voluntary, and how to keep human rights at the center of the complex processes. 

It’s telling that one of the first actions that Russian forces took in their invasion of Ukraine was to blow up a dam on the North Crimean Canal (NCC), allowing water to flow back into Crimea. The current war being waged by Russia in Ukraine has its origins in fractured and contested political history, but there are also key natural resource security questions which often go overlooked. While there are established debates about the extent to which natural resources contribute to conflict, the current conflagration exemplifies a rare use of water as a means of direct leverage in a military standoff. Regardless of the outcome of the conflict, the tensions between Russia and Ukraine over the NCC illustrate the need to consider the role of natural resources—and access to them—in broader diplomatic efforts.

“After a series of poor harvests, limited rainfall, and an increase in the price of fertilizer, farm work has become unprofitable,” said Lazher, a fellah (agricultural laborer) from Tataouine in the rural south east of Tunisia. The 45-year-old had worked the land for half his life, even dropping out of school early to support his young family. However, when I met Lazher in December 2021, he was making the final arrangements to migrate to Tunisia’s capital, Tunis, in search of better job opportunities. Now, with diminishing local opportunities for agricultural work and few local companies that might hire unemployed laborers, Lazher secured work in one of Tunis’s many dried fruit shops called hamas. 

In Nairobi this month, the world’s governments will discuss the path towards the first global treaty to tackle plastic pollution. But with multiple proposals on the table, the scope and ambition of a potential treaty hangs in the balance.

As northeast China freezes with the onset of winter, cranes fly south to Poyang Lake, China’s largest freshwater wetland sanctuary, along with hundreds of thousands of migratory wildfowl. For birds that feed on tubers of submerged aquatic plants, such as the critically endangered Siberian Crane, the threatened and declining Swan Goose, and thousands of Tundra Swans, Poyang’s food-rich winter wetlands are key to their survival. However, dams along the Yangtze River and growing floods are disturbing the natural rise and fall of water levels that are needed for Poyang’s aquatic plants to thrive. Poorly regulated and expanding sand dredging in the Yangtze River and Poyang Lake is increasing turbulence in the water, limiting light reaching the aquatic plants that migratory birds rely on. 

Growing up in Austria in the 1990s, one of the underlying lessons I learned in middle school was that nuclear power is humanity’s downfall. Though never explicitly described that way in the curriculum, from a young age my peers and I knew to associate the black-and-yellow trefoil symbol with apocalyptic environmental destruction. Reflecting on my upbringing helps me understand why so many in Germany, Austria, Denmark, Greece, and Italy argue that nuclear power should be our last resort as an energy resource. How could we allow the development and use of such dangerous technologies in our own lives? How could we just move on and accept that a nuclear accident could kill all of us at any moment?  

Water provision is “more lucrative than drugs,” said one of the interviewees in our research in Karachi, Pakistan. Competition for control of the city’s water includes water mafias and formal institutions. As water becomes increasingly scarce due to ongoing climate changes in the Indus Basin, it is already a source of intense economic and political competition. If not addressed in time, water scarcity may deepen fault lines in this highly fractured, multi-ethnic, populous city.  

As the novel COVID-19 coronavirus swept the planet in early 2020, researchers scrambled to find effective treatments and vaccines. Within a year, there was a clarion call from heads of state, the World Health Organization (WHO) and other agencies to create an international “pandemic preparedness and response” treaty. WHO noted that COVID-19 offered “a stark and painful reminder that nobody is safe until everyone is safe” from zoonotic disease outbreaks.