Like bamboo sprouts after the rain, nuclear reactors are going up quickly across China. There are 36 reactors under development, and Beijing can approve as many as 10 new ones a year. Within a decade, China will likely pass the United States—which has 93 operating commercial nuclear reactors at 54 power plants—as the world’s biggest generator of nuclear power.

A window into what we are reading at the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program

2024 World Migration Report Highlights Climate-Food-Mobility Nexus (International Organization for Migration)

The International Organization for Migration’s flagship World Migration Report 2024 highlights a wide variety of factors contributing to global migration, including conflict, economic or political insecurity, and climate change. Between 2020 and 2022 the number of asylum seekers increased more than 30% to 5.4 million people. The report centers climate change’s impact on food security as a core driver of migration. In 2022, 275 million people faced acute food insecurity, which represents a 146% increase since 2016.

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.

“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).

In a new Occasional Paper published by the Wilson Center’s Middle East Program and ECSP, journalist Taylor Luck examines the climate priorities of wealthy and middle-income countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Luck analyzes the policies adopted by MENA states, highlighting gaps and offering recommendations to strengthen climate action in a region strained by both instability and climate change.

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.

A window into what we are reading at the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program

WMO Says 2023 Saw Record Heats (World Meteorological Organization)

In a new report, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) revealed that records for greenhouse gas levels, surface temperature, ocean heat & acidification, sea level rise, Antarctic Sea ice cover, and glacial retreat were smashed over the past year. The State of the Climate study also confirmed that 2023 was the warmest year on record, with temperatures 1.45 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The WMO also noted that the past decade marked the warmest 10-year period on record.