With the tumultuous NATO summit and a simmering trade war dominating stateside headlines last month, the European Union’s progress on climate-security connections has received little attention. After the U.S. government rolled back its significant efforts in early 2017, the EU and its leading members—particularly Sweden and Germany—picked up the ball. Three significant events herald what could be the start of a new era of climate-security policymaking—one under European leadership.

The Columbia River basin—which spans four U.S. states, two Canadian provinces, and 32 Tribal Nations or First Nations—touches the lives of more than five million people each day. The basin’s 250 hydroelectric dams power everything from Google’s data center to irrigation pumps that spread water onto fields of alfalfa and potatoes. Steelhead trout and salmon rely on the river to spawn. Ships and tugboats transport millions of tons of cargo to and from the Pacific Ocean.

After four months of political unrest and more than 250 deaths, the calls for Nicaragua’s embattled president Daniel Ortega to step down are escalating. One of political demography’s most robust statistical findings tells us that countries where an authoritarian government rules a youthful population, any change in regime typically yields an autocracy or at best, a partial democracy. Only very rarely has a liberal democracy emerged immediately after a rebellion in a youthful country (one with a population with a median age under 26 years). Given this, if Ortega is ousted from office, what type of leader should foreign affairs analysts expect to replace him?

 “Kabul be zar basha be barf ne!” This ancient proverb—“May Kabul be without gold rather than snow”—refers to snowmelt from the Hindu Kush Mountains, a primary source of Afghanistan’s water supply. To recover from years of armed conflict, Afghanistan needs a stable water supply, but its sources are increasingly stressed by severe droughts. The Norwegian Refugee Council estimates that today, 2 out of 3 provinces are impacted by drought, putting two million people at risk of hunger. Improving the country’s water governance—the social, legal, and administrative systems that guide how water is distributed and used—may help it avoid both internal and regional conflicts by stabilizing its economy and its citizens’ livelihoods.

“At the heart of…USAID’s transformation, is the core belief that each country must lead its development journey, and finance and implement solutions to its development challenges,” said Susan Fine of USAID at a recent Center for Global Development event introducing USAID’s new “Journey to Self-Reliance ” indicators.

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.

Today, African leaders agree that Africa has a great opportunity to reap economic benefits from strategic investments made in the continent’s current large youthful population. The “demographic dividend” is the accelerated economic growth that can result from improved reproductive health, a rapid decline in fertility, and the subsequent shift in population age structure. With more people in the labor force and fewer children to support, a country has a window of opportunity—but only if the right social and economic investments and policies are made in health, education, governance, and the economy.