Global climate action must be sensitive to ‘land grabs’ and lost livelihoods for both a safer and greener world to be built in Glasgow.

With all eyes on COP26, the world is holding its breath. This year’s negotiations will need to see truly ambitious commitments to ramp up climate action in order to avoid a dangerous future. There has never been a greater sense of the urgency in the climate movement.

As a peacebuilder, I’m looking closely at what the implications of the much-needed pledges might be for the 1.5 billion people living in fragile and conflict-affected contexts. The discussion on the impact of climate change on security and social stability is gaining momentum but is still effectively on the fringes of the COP26 agenda. That is a concern.

From Friday night fish fries to shrimp cocktails, people sheltering in place have learned how to cook their favorite dishes at home. As a result U.S. seafood sales have doubled during the pandemic. Globally, the United States ranks fifth in seafood consumption and China—where hunger for seafood has skyrocketed with rising incomes—is number one. While wild fisheries are on the decline, aquaculture is expanding to increase the global food supply.

On July 16, 2021, after nearly two decades of research and preparation, China finally opened what is now the world’s largest national emissions trading scheme (ETS). The much anticipated move follows the central government’s ambitious pledge to reach peak CO2 emissions before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060. Several Chinese cities and provinces, including Shanghai, have been operating ETS pilots for several years. For Shanghai, the rollout of China’s national ETS bolsters its existing carbon marketplace and complements the multitude of other local and national decarbonization initiatives the city is undertaking. The national scheme is an encouraging step in China’s climate action, but on its own it is not a silver bullet to decarbonize the economy.

A “code red for humanity”— that is how UN Secretary General António Guterres described the future climate scenarios laid out in the International Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment Report. According to the report, CO2 in the atmosphere has reached levels unseen in 2 million years, amplifying floods, droughts, and other environmental catastrophes around the world. 

Connected and healthy rivers deliver diverse benefits that are often overlooked: freshwater fish stocks that improve food security for hundreds of millions of people, nutrient-rich sediment that supports agriculture and keeps deltas above rising seas, floodplains that help mitigate the impact of floods, and a wealth of biodiversity. Navigating Trade-Offs Between Dams And River Conservation, a new report in the journal, Global Sustainability, reveals that if all proposed hydropower dams are built, over 260,000 km of rivers (160,000 miles), including the Amazon, Congo, Irrawaddy, and Salween mainstem rivers, will lose free-flowing status.

Of the many ways in which the 2020 presidential election might reshape American society, its impact on climate policy may well be the most significant. The Biden administration’s ability to move forward with its agenda, however, is greatly constrained by the carbon-climate cleavage that increasingly shapes American legislative politics and electoral competition. The administration has met this challenge with a three-prong strategy intended to bridge this cleavage.

The travails of the last year, when a bat virus infected humans and turned the world upside down, were an unfortunate reminder of the inseparable ties between society and the natural environment.

So it is with water, which will again this year direct the course of history, through events small and large.

What are the large events to pay attention to? What are the trends and flashpoints?