A window into what we’re reading at the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program 

Mekong River Development Faces Public Outcry (Mongabay) 

The Mekong River flows through China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam—and a new development on this waterway near the downstream Thailand-Laos border has triggered protests in Thailand. The Pak Beng hydropower development is a joint project of China Datang Overseas Investment and Thailand-based Gulf Energy Development which is estimated to generate 912 megawatts of power to be sold to Thailand’s state energy company. 

While traditional fuels likely will remain part of Africa’s energy portfolio for some time to come, the fossil fuel industry does face strong headwinds from a continuing global march towards alternative sources of clean energy. Indeed, the energy poverty experienced by nearly a billion Africans seems incomprehensible given the combination of massive untapped oil and gas resources, as well as available hydropower, solar and wind potential across the continent.

A window into what we’re reading at the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program 

Famine Prevention Systems Prove Insufficient (Reuters)

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (or IPC) is a global partnership that monitors hunger levels. It is widely recognized for its five-phase classification system of food insecurity that ranges from “minimal” (Phase 1) to “famine” (Phase 5). While the IPC’s aim is to inform humanitarian organizations at an early stage of a crisis to allow them streamline the flow of aid, the worsening global hunger levels experienced this year have pointed to shortcomings in existing prevention systems. 

Our present ecocrisis drives human insecurity. Single weather events killed hundreds in 2024, even in wealthy countries such as the United States or Spain. And beyond that staggering toll in human lives lurk staggering amounts of money required to repair and rebuild. In the United States alone, inflation-adjusted disaster-attributable costs have reached on average $153 billion each year. These factors and others make global environmental change a severe risk to human security.

“I think we need to approach climate security completely differently,” said Sharon Burke, Founder and President of Ecospherics and Wilson Center Global Fellow, at the recent 2024 Montreal Climate Security Summit. “It’s not just that climate change is an opportunity cost in combat power, or that it’s effecting our bases and operating environment, or that it is an accelerant to instability. It is itself the threat.”