The global water wars are almost upon us!

At least that’s how it seems to many. The signs are troubling: Egypt and Ethiopia have recently increased their aggressive posture and rhetoric over the construction of the Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam in the headwaters of the Blue Nile, Egypt’s major artery since antiquity. India continues to build new dams that are seen by its rival Pakistan as a threat to its “water interests” and thus its national security. Turkey, from its dominant position upstream, has been diverting the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and increasing water stress in the already-volatile states of Iraq and Syria.

With almost 800 million people currently lacking access to clean water and two-thirds of the world’s population projected to face conditions of severe water stress by 2025, disputes over water are a growing global concern. But while dwindling water supplies sharpen focus on conflict, long-term peacebuilding opportunities are often overlooked. [Video Below]

Just months after popular uprisings toppled Tunisia and Egypt’s authoritarian regimes, a trio of complex-system researchers published a brief article linking these demonstrations with high levels of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s international Food Price Index. Marco Lagi, Karla Bertrand, and Yaneer Bar-Yam’s model, which predicts outbreaks of deadly social conflict when the index tops 210, has since become a popular explanation wielded by many for bouts of popular unrest, including the Arab Spring and overthrow of Ukraine’s government. But were food prices really an underlying “hidden” cause for the start of a wave of instability that is still being felt today?

“The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is an attempt to get an international group of scientists together to assess what we know about climate change,” says Geoff Dabelko in an interview with the Wilson Center’s Context program. “That is not a quick process.”

Vulnerability to climate change is in part determined by exposure to specific changes – proximity to low lying coastal areas or areas of likely drought – but state capacity also plays a major role. And interventions targeting either must reflect the complex links that bind the two, says International Alert’s Janani Vivekananda in an interview with adelphi’s Environment, Conflict, and Cooperation platform.

Last year a Kiribati man, Ioane Teitiota, claimed asylum in New Zealand, stating that his home island, which is on average just two meters above sea level, was becoming uninhabitable thanks to rising seas. So-called “king tides” routinely wash over entire portions of the archipelago.