Without connections to wider electrical grids, communities in the remote, rural Arctic depend on diesel generators for power—which makes electricity “ten times more expensive” than in the rest of Canada or the United States, said Martha Lenio of the World Wildlife Fund-Canada Arctic Team during a recent Wilson Center Ground Truth Briefing. In addition, spilled diesel “can harm wildlife, impact food and water security, and compromise permafrost integrity,” said Lenio. These challenges have led some communities in the Arctic to seek cheaper, safer, and more innovative energy solutions, said panelists during the briefing organized by the Wilson Center’s Polar Initiative and Canada Institute.

As the Atlantic hurricane season kicks off this month, some coastal communities in the United States and small-island nations in the Caribbean are still recovering from last year’s record-breaking damage. At the same time, the heavy rains pounding the East Coast this week are part of a long-term trend towards more severe heavy rainfall events that have led to deadly floods and threaten critical U.S. military bases. Even on sunny days, cities such as Norfolk and Manila contend with high tide or “nuisance” flooding—a phenomenon that has increased as much as nine-fold since the 1960s, according to NOAA.

As the national security ramifications of climate change grow more pronounced, climate manipulation technologies, known as geoengineering, will become more attractive as a method of staving off climate-related security emergencies.  However, geoengineering technologies could disrupt the global ecological status quo, and could pose a potentially coercive (and very serious) threat to peace. Is it possible to obtain the potential benefits of these game-changing technologies, while avoiding spurring violence and conflict?  In a recent article in Strategic Studies Quarterly, we argue that just war theory—which defines the concepts of “right” and “wrong” in warfare—could provide ethical standards for security decision-makers as they consider whether or how geoengineering should be used to address the climate challenge.

One of the most recent and promising tools to cope with the consequences of the rising number of disasters is climate risk insurance. In exchange for an annual premium, they quickly provide states and other actors (including individuals) with much-needed cash to cope with the impacts of natural hazards such as hurricanes, droughts, and floods.  Within certain parameters, policyholders are largely free to determine how they want to use the payouts. The African Risk Capacity (ARC), the Caribbean Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF), and the Pacific Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility (PCRAFI Facility) serve as cases in point. To date, they have made 44 payouts to 19 countries totaling about US$ 173 million. Simply put: they work.

Many studies on natural disasters and conflict have assumed that disasters make it easier for rebel groups to recruit new members by fueling grievances against the government and lowering the opportunity costs of joining an insurgency, and that this recruitment will increase conflict. But disasters may actually have the opposite effect. My study of rebel groups in the Philippines, recently published in the Journal of Peace Research, suggests that by weakening the organizational structure and supply lines of rebel groups and their ability to enlist new fighters, disasters may instead reduce the intensity of the conflict, rather than increase it.

Water variability is increasing “due to climate change and to more frequent natural disasters,” said Jonathan Cook, Senior Climate Change Adaptation Specialist with the U.S. Agency for International Development, at the fourth and final event in a series on water security organized by the Wilson Center and the Sustainable Water Partnership. To solve the problem of increasingly erratic water, “business as usual is really not acceptable anymore,” said Will Sarni, founder of WetDATA.org, who called for new, innovative ideas: “Hope is not a strategy.”

“Alaska is a place in which climate change is already impacting us in very observable ways,” says Byron Mallott, the  Lieutenant Governor of Alaska, in a video interview with Wilson Center NOW.  “We have erosion from sea ice leaving the coast. We have patterns of weather change. We have, in the North Pacific Ocean, ocean water change [and] temperature changes taking place. We have ocean acidification moving further north. We have had impact on fisheries already—economic impact.”

Put simply, “the damn thing melted,” Navy Secretary Richard Spencer explained in recent testimony, referring to Arctic ice melt as the trigger for the new U.S. Navy Arctic Strategy that is to be released this summer. What the Navy planned as a 16-year road map is in need of updates after only four years, in part due to receding polar ice caps, which are “opening new trade routes, exposing new resources, and redrawing continental maps,” but also in part due to the rise of China as an “Arctic stakeholder” and increasing important player in the region.