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.

In many parts of South and Southeast Asia, high population density and vulnerability to climate change combine with low levels of household resilience and poor governance to increase security concerns and the potential for political instability. To help identify risks and hotspots in this critical region, the Complex Emergencies and Political Stability in Asia (CEPSA) program at the University of Texas-Austin recently launched the Complex Emergencies Dashboard, which integrates raw data and modeling with mapping technology, allowing users to visually analyze regional security issues. The project was funded by the Department of Defense’s Minerva Initiative, which also supported similar work by the university’s Climate Change and African Political Stability (CCAPS) program.

 “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.

As the Atlantic hurricane season kicks off this month, some coastal communities in the United States and small-island nations in the Caribbean are still recovering from last year’s record-breaking damage. At the same time, the heavy rains pounding the East Coast this week are part of a long-term trend towards more severe heavy rainfall events that have led to deadly floods and threaten critical U.S. military bases. Even on sunny days, cities such as Norfolk and Manila contend with high tide or “nuisance” flooding—a phenomenon that has increased as much as nine-fold since the 1960s, according to NOAA.

As the national security ramifications of climate change grow more pronounced, climate manipulation technologies, known as geoengineering, will become more attractive as a method of staving off climate-related security emergencies.  However, geoengineering technologies could disrupt the global ecological status quo, and could pose a potentially coercive (and very serious) threat to peace. Is it possible to obtain the potential benefits of these game-changing technologies, while avoiding spurring violence and conflict?  In a recent article in Strategic Studies Quarterly, we argue that just war theory—which defines the concepts of “right” and “wrong” in warfare—could provide ethical standards for security decision-makers as they consider whether or how geoengineering should be used to address the climate challenge.

Last year, four rivers were granted legal rights: the Whanganui in New Zealand, Rio Atrato in Colombia, and the Ganga and Yamuna rivers in India. These four cases present powerful examples of the increasing relevance of rights-centered environmental protection. Like corporations, which have legal rights in many jurisdictions, these rivers are rights-bearing entities whose rights can be enforced by local communities and individuals in court. But unlike corporations, these rights are not yet recognized in international treaties. Which raises the question: what are the implications of rights for nature for international environmental law?

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.

Water variability is increasing “due to climate change and to more frequent natural disasters,” said Jonathan Cook, Senior Climate Change Adaptation Specialist with the U.S. Agency for International Development, at the fourth and final event in a series on water security organized by the Wilson Center and the Sustainable Water Partnership. To solve the problem of increasingly erratic water, “business as usual is really not acceptable anymore,” said Will Sarni, founder of WetDATA.org, who called for new, innovative ideas: “Hope is not a strategy.”