May 5th is the International Day of the Midwife. This year’s theme, “Midwives: A Vital Climate Solution,” acknowledges the role that midwives play by delivering environmentally sustainable health services, adapting health systems to climate change, and as first responders when climate-related disasters occur.  Empowering a resilient health workforce with midwives as first contacts for maternal health care can improve universal health coverage through reductions in environmental impact, as well as more efficient, less costly health systems, and stronger local economies.

Back in 2020, Shiyang Li at Rare visited restaurants across China to interview over 30 different owners and staff about the attitudes, beliefs, and everyday behaviors that contribute to food waste.  Similar to global trends, food waste in China remains a significant challenge. A 2020 survey found restaurants in Chinese cities wasted at least 34 million tons of food every year, which can feed as many as 49 million people.

“I’m only 33 years old. I have my entire life to live, and I would like to retire on a habitable planet.” | Zulfiya Suleimenova

Signs of our warming planet reveal themselves through the smallest of changes. Zulfiya Suleimenova, Kazakhstan’s Special Representative for International Environmental Cooperation, noticed something odd when she left Kazakhstan’s capital, Astana, in late November for the 28th United Nations Climate Conference (COP28).

As the world becomes increasingly interconnected through travel, communication, and information, interdisciplinary approaches to address global and reproductive health issues are crucial. And as the politics of reproductive healthcare are shifting in uneven ways across the globe, the need for deep understanding of local contexts within a globalized world is ever more vital. Our recently published, co-edited Wiley Blackwell handbook, A Companion to the Anthropology of Reproductive Medicine and Technology provides a sweeping overview of studies of reproduction from an anthropologically informed lens with a commitment to interdisciplinary approaches at the intersection of medical anthropology, feminist Science and Technology Studies (STS), global and public health, and critical analyses of both gender and sexuality and of  race and ethnicity.

The contentious and ambiguous entanglement that military forces have with their natural environment inevitably sparkles public interest and academic research. So how does the existing scholarly work inform our assessment of this convergence?

Around 8.5 million pangolins are estimated to have been trafficked from Africa between 2014 and 2021, with many ending up in China

In March 2019, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and China’s National Forestry and Grassland Administration co-hosted two workshops on reducing wildlife trafficking in Kenya and Botswana. These workshops, supported by the Chinese embassies in Nairobi and Gaborone, attracted over 200 Chinese nationals working for state-owned or private companies in the two countries. During the workshops, the international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) and Chinese government officials expressed their shared goal of reducing the illegal trade of products from rare and endangered African species to China, one of the world’s largest markets for trafficked wildlife products.

Zambia’s Copperbelt province is a microcosm of foreign investment on the continent.

Fly into Lusaka and marvel at the capital’s strikingly modern airport. Drive into town along a road as smooth as any American highway. Look left and notice a large white hospital complex. Glance right only a few minutes later to see the city’s impressive conference center with a “Golden Chopsticks” restaurant next door.

Climate change’s potential to aggravate insecurity, particularly through violent conflict, has created a fear that is both widespread and justified. Civil and defense ministries around the world now include climate impacts in their strategic planning, and climate security assessments have become a common policy tool.