While attention in the United States is focused on the disasters in Puerto Rico and the Caribbean, a crisis across the Atlantic is rapidly becoming one of the worst humanitarian disasters since World War II. In the Lake Chad basin of West Africa, about 17 million people are affected by the emergency, struggling with food insecurity, widespread violence, involuntary displacement, and the consequences of environmental degradation. An estimated 800,000 children suffer from acute malnutrition; and although international donors pledged $672 million in February, the famine and humanitarian misery continues unabated. Suicide bombings and attacks by Boko Haram, which have killed at least 381 civilians since April 2017, have forced many people to leave their homes and farmers to leave their lands, interrupting livelihoods and reducing food supplies.

In 2011, a group of Hong Kong water activists and researchers traveled the length of the Dongjiang (East) River, which stretches from northeast Guangdong Province into Hong Kong’s New Territories, to investigate the challenges facing the watershed. The Dongjiang basin, which provides nearly 80 percent of Hong Kong’s water supply, has suffered water shortages due to the region’s increasing urbanization and industrialization. They found unchecked wastewater discharges—from agriculture, poultry farms, chemical plants, tanneries, and even an open-air quartz quarry—were dangerously degrading  water quality.

It is encouraging to see that the United Nations Security Council is beginning to acknowledge the transboundary dimensions of fragility and conflict, as demonstrated by its newly launched Report of the Secretary-General on the situation in the Lake Chad Basin region. The report, which was presented in the Security Council on 13 September 2017, emphasizes the need for regional responses and the enhanced cooperation of different UN and humanitarian agencies as important steps to addressing the unfolding humanitarian crisis. However, while regional responses to address the regional security challenge are desirable, the report would have been stronger if it had highlighted the underlying environmental contributions of the region’s fragility. 

As the Senate returns from recess, passing the annual National Defense Authorization Act will be one of its top priorities—and this year it could include a potentially controversial amendment directing the Pentagon to assess the impact of climate change on national security. In the House, the Langevin amendment surprisingly garnered enough Republican support to withstand a challenge in July. Since then, two more senior military appointees have testified to the importance of understanding the challenges climate change poses to national security. 

Organized crime, arms and drugs smuggling, and conflict often overlap with environmental crimes like illegal fishing. A new interactive database from the Stimson Center’s Environment Security program maps incidents of illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing with the aim to “illuminate and educate on the geostrategic security implications of environmental crime; foster the creation of a new and expanding community of natural security stakeholders; and change the terms of the conversation on environment crime, leading to innovation policy solutions.”

The region at the base of the Himalayas faces difficult tradeoffs when allocating freshwater resources for energy production versus agricultural, industrial, and domestic uses. This is one of the most ecologically unstable areas on Earth, and weather patterns are becoming increasingly irregular. On one end of the spectrum, water shortages frequently disrupt energy production, which depends largely on water-intensive coal and hydropower plants. The opposite extreme is also a factor: Dozens of hydropower plants in the Himalayas have been damaged or destroyed by severe floods caused by unusually heavy rainfall in recent years. Construction of new power plants faces increasing resistance from local communities, resulting in social disruptions and instability. In order to ensure both energy security and water security for their countries, governments must look beyond hydropower and coal.

The Philippines faces a breadth of social and environmental challenges that threaten its economic and political stability. A long history of violent conflict stemming from ethnic, religious, and political tensions is further complicated by changing weather patterns that cause severe drought and damaging storms. Millions of people in Mindanao have been displaced by violence and extreme weather events, and their migration from rural areas leaves room for the expansion of terrorist groups that threaten regional stability. The United States currently has strong trade and cultural ties to the Philippines, and U.S. Pacific Command operates military facilities on the islands. This chapter examines the stakes for U.S. interests in Mindanao, and recommends a security approach that combines defense, diplomacy, and development efforts to promote improved governance, social stability, and climate resilience.