When Lake Poopó, Bolivia’s second-largest lake, dried up last December, an entire community lost their way of life and the scientific community cast their eyes to the map asking, where next? They didn’t have to look far. According to a report prepared by the World Lake Vision Committee, a collaboration between the International Lake Committee Foundation, the Shiga Prefectural Government of Japan, and the United Nations Environment Program, there are very few major lake systems that are not experiencing decreasing water quality, volume, biodiversity, or some combination of the three.

Yesterday afternoon President Obama announced a new Presidential Memorandum on climate change and national security. The policy directs 20 federal agencies to consider the national security implications of climate change and establish a working group that will develop a Climate Change and National Security Action Plan for the federal government.

With the Sustainable Development Goals nearing their one-year anniversary, the global community continues to strive toward eradicating poverty by 2030. In order to achieve this ambitious target, many international development practitioners are embracing a more holistic approach to development, combining traditionally single-sector programming, like health or environment work, into more comprehensive efforts. But such integrated development is sometimes easier said than done.

Although separated by a thousand miles, the women of the Malaysian state of Sarawak and the Filipino island of Mindoro are united by a major struggle: climate change. As rainfall patterns grow increasingly unpredictable, natural disasters become more frequent, and drought ravages once-arable land, women are on the frontlines in both communities.

Ten miles south of Tel Aviv, I stand on a catwalk over two concrete reservoirs the size of football fields and watch water pour into them from a massive pipe emerging from the sand. The pipe is so large I could walk through it standing upright, were it not full of Mediterranean seawater pumped from an intake a mile offshore.

Overfishing by foreign fleets in West Africa is leading to devastating social and economic consequences. In a report from the Overseas Development Institute, an independent think tank based in London, researchers use satellite data to assess the scale of two kinds of illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing: “reefers,” or large-scale commercial vessels receiving and freezing fish at sea and at port, and large refrigerated container ships that are registered in countries with less stringent enforcement regulations than that of the ship’s owners.

One fear of climate change is that more variable weather conditions will lead to violence and chaos in some places. But looking at it methodically, do erratic weather conditions actually lead to violent conflict and political instability? Not necessarily.

Today, as El Niño-related droughts impact communities across East and Southern Africa, food aid shipment and distribution networks have shifted into high gear. From the U.S. Agency for International Development to the United Nations World Food Program and NGOs like CARE and Save the Children, food aid providers are stocking port warehouses in Djibouti and South Africa, as well as inland warehouses in countries like Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, and Lesotho.