In a commanding speech at Old Dominion University this week, Secretary Kerry announced a dramatic step toward integrating climate and security into U.S. foreign policy. In Norfolk, Virginia, home to the world’s largest naval station, Kerry said the State Department is creating a new “task force of senior government officials to determine how best to integrate climate and security analysis into overall foreign policy planning and priorities.”

In the midst of a minefield on day two of Desert Storm Task Force Ripper, Marine Corps Operations Officer Richard Zilmer stepped out of his armored personnel carrier, squinted up at the sky, and saw nothing but black from horizon to horizon. Iraqi forces, trying desperately to blunt the attack of coalition armies, had set fire to hundreds of Kuwaiti oil wells and oil-filled trenches.

A recent article by Malcolm Potts, Aafreen Mahmood, and Alisha Graves of the University of California Berkeley’s OASIS Initiative notes that family planning has an important role to play in building peace by increasing women’s empowerment and their agency. “The pill is mightier than the sword,” as they put it.

Barren barley and wheat fields stretch across the dry landscape of northern Afghanistan, the result of persistent drought and flash flooding that has left thousands of people facing food shortages and loss of work.

In May 2011, two weeks before I was scheduled to start research in the region, a Mongol herder named Mergen was hit by a mining truck while protecting his pastureland in Xilingol, Inner Mongolia. He was dragged 140 feet and killed. His death sparked a month of protests.

When war breaks out, what happens to the weather forecast? Violent conflict disrupts many essential services in developing countries and one of the most overlooked is meteorology, which has surprisingly big consequences for farmers, policymakers, and the aid workers who are there to help.

The board of the United Nations’ lead organization on trade and development, called UNCTAD, released an assessment of Gaza’s development challenges during their annual meeting in Geneva this month and the news is not good. In 2012, the UN warned that a “herculean” development effort would be to keep pace with Gaza’s rapid population growth. Since then, more fighting with Israel has made things worse, particularly with regard to water and food security. Ninety-five percent of the water from Gaza’s coastal aquifer is unsafe for drinking without treatment, the report says. Contamination and over-extraction may even render it unusable by next year and damage may be irreversible if not addressed in the next five years.

Some of the world’s most crucial ecosystems can also be found in the most conflicted areas. The most progressive peace agreements in these circumstances sometimes include conservation protections, but fewer still include women – and that’s a an article in Peace Review by Conservation International’s Brittany Ajroud, Kame Westerman, and Janet Edmond.