An international food crisis is currently unfolding on a scale not seen since World War II. More than 20 million people in Somalia, Nigeria, South Sudan, and Yemen are in danger of famine. UN Under-Secretary-General and Emergency Relief Coordinator Stephen O’Brien said in March, “We are facing the largest humanitarian crisis since the creation of the United Nations.”

VENGANTHANKUSI, India – Vijayakumar, 51, was a successful rice grower his entire life until this rainless harvest season. Described by family and friends as a tall, steady man of few words, Vijayakumar seemed unbent by the paralyzing consequences of Tamil Nadu’s deepest drought in 140 years.

The state of the global environment is terrible – and deteriorating. The globalization of industrial production and the consumptive habits of 7 billion people have created the Anthropocene, a geologic age in which the actions of humans are the primary determinant of the Earth’s natural systems. This shift creates a profound new form of environmental interdependence, of which climate change is only the most salient example.

Water scarcity has contributed to an “arc of instability” characterized by conflict and displacement that stretches from West Africa to the Middle East, said a panel of experts at the Wilson Center on March 1. Two authors from an upcoming compilation of case studies on water security and violent conflict by World Wildlife Fund gave overviews of challenges in Nigeria and Iran and recommendations for U.S. engagement.

Forecasts of future climate conditions are fairly good, but forecasts of future socioeconomic conditions are another story. To get a sense of how climate change will impact society, many resort to simply layering future climate conditions on top of current socioeconomic conditions. That’s a mistake, write Wolfgang Lutz and Raya Muttarak in Nature Climate Change. “We see little value in the purely hypothetical exercise of assessing potential impacts of the future climate on a society that will not exist in the future.”

Over the last 60 years, more than two-thirds of the world’s remaining biodiversity hotspots have experienced armed conflict. The effects have been myriad, from destruction as a result of military tactics to indirect socioeconomic and political changes, like human migration and displacement. This so-called “war on wildlife” has important implications for conservation and peacebuilding efforts, according to a recent literature review published in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.

More than 40 years ago, the Soviet Union attempted to harness hydropower to modernize Afghanistan. Between 1960 and 1968, they poured money and technical knowledge into the 100-meter Naghlu gravity dam outside Kabul and a village for its workers called Sharnak. Although the town has been damaged and the boons of modernity remain elusive for many Afghans, the dam remains a crucial source of power for the capital and is the largest power plant in the country with an installed capacity of 100 megawatts.