Diplomacy between cities, counties, states and regions is critical to ensuring that diplomatic doors between countries are left open throughout changing political cycles at the national level. Such efforts are more important now than ever, especially for the climate crisis. As we head into COP27 with the message “from ambition to implementation,” cities have a critical role to play as the venues where many of the policies discussed at international climate negotiations will play out.

Secretary of State Anthony J. Blinken recently reaffirmed the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)—a nation located in Africa’s heart—as a “geostrategic player and critical partner” for the United States. It is a country that features prominently in climate change discussions, not only because of  its vast natural resources (including mineral wealth estimated to be the largest in the world, as well as possession of a forest cover second only to the Amazon Basin), but especially due to its cobalt reserves.

As the COVID-19 pandemic gripped the world in late 2019 and early 2020, the world’s great hope was in the rapid development and deployment of vaccines. Global public health organizations hoped to seize upon the crisis to advance international cooperative efforts to fight COVID-19, and the promise of advanced economies embracing “vaccine diplomacy” to get shots into arms around the planet was a key element in this strategy.

As Russia’s war in Ukraine continues and nations are returning to behaviors best explained by realism, we are wrestling with these trends’ longer-term implications on water diplomacy. States are becoming inward-looking and prioritizing national sovereignty. Debates about water and climate are resurfacing, and we should better understand how hard power and inward-looking approaches can impact water diplomacy and cooperation. To inform policymakers about power sensitivities and power games played in diplomacy, water diplomats must rethink the future of water security and peace. They should reexamine leadership styles, cultural sensitivities, and knowledge exchange from the lens of realism.

From climate change to COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine, the world is a landscape of increasing instability. Book-ending the Top 5 posts of June are two articles that explore different aspects of these converging risks. In the top post for June, Steven Gale and Mat Burrows write that globally, younger generations are becoming increasingly disengaged and discontent with their democratic governments, civil society, and institutions. Youth disillusionment is not a result of ignorance to current affairs, but rather a lack of faith in democratic institutions to address today’s most pressing global issues. Tackling youth disillusionment, suggest Gale and Burrows, begins with examining youth engagement trends and placing it at the top of the agenda.

As we face the twin crises of biodiversity loss and climate change, natural resource management is now more critical than ever—especially in the protection of one of our most precious resources: water.

The stakes of getting it wrong couldn’t be higher: increasing economic inequities and substandard public health for a growing population. And the evidence that such issues have won the attention of political leaders is increasing, with the June 2022 introduction of a White House Action Plan on Global Water Security that links this crucial issue directly to U.S. national security and offers pathways and proposed resources to advance progress broadly on multiple fronts.

Last week saw the launch of SIPRI’s major policy report Environment of Peace: Security in a New Era of Risk, looking at how to manage the growing risks emerging at the nexus of environmental degradation, peace and security.

The intensifying enmity between the United States and Russia arising from the war in Ukraine may obscure a fundamental and durable milestone in climate science: One of the most significant pieces of evidence substantiating a shared major security concern—anthropogenic climate change—was the result of United States, French, and Russian cooperation. Ice cores drilled at Russia’s Antarctic Vostok Station provided among the most incontrovertible proof linking human greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to increasing atmospheric temperatures—over two decades ago.