Climate change can undermine stability in the Middle East and North Africa, where both the United States and Europe have critical foreign policy and security interests. The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region “is impacted by climate and resource scarcity risks now, in the medium, and in the long term,” said Nick Mabey, director and chief executive of the environmental think tank E3G, during a recent Wilson Center event on building climate resilience in MENA countries. “It’s a region that is highly vulnerable to climate change,” said Mabey, and “also incredibly vulnerable to global systems.” 

As the Climate Conference of Parties (COP-23) wraps up in Bonn, Germany, the prime minister of the tiny Pacific island nation of Tuvalu, which is sinking a few millimeters every year, made an impassioned call for transparency in the Paris Agreement “rule book” and for ratcheting up worldwide ambitions to reduce climate change.  While informal texts were drafted to guide implementation of the historic 2015 Paris Agreement, formal adoption of these rules will have to wait until COP-24, to be held in Poland next year.

“Change is everywhere where snow leopards live,” said World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Vice President Kate Newman at a recent Wilson Center event. “The life of the snow leopard is intimately intertwined with the lives of the people in these high mountains,” she said. If you care about water security and climate resilience in Asia, you should also care about the integrity of the snow leopard’s habitat, added Koustubh Sharma of the Snow Leopard Trust. These beautiful and enigmatic animals are “the thermometers of the health of these ecosystems.”

The frontlines of climate change are the world’s shorelines. “It goes without saying that people living in coastal communities are already observing impacts,” said Erin Derrington, a coastal resources specialist working in the Northern Mariana Islands, at a recent Wilson Center event, the third in a series on coastal resilience presented in collaboration with the Hoover Institute and the Stanford Woods Institute on the Environment. “Although that is a challenge, it is also an opportunity and a driver for change and innovation,” said Derrington.

As our climate changes, “we are vulnerable to unacceptable risks of failures in functionality, durability, and safety,” said Alice C. Hill, former senior director for resiliency policy for the National Security Council, as she launched Resilience Week at the Wilson Center. During the week, members of the UN Resilience Academy joined representatives from the Wilson Center, Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and the Hoover Institute for in-depth discussions on building global resilience in the face of environmental change. “Resilience is proving necessary to withstand the disruptions to our very interconnected systems,” she said.

Hurricanes Irma and Maria devastated Puerto Rico, leaving many on the island without power, drinking water, or cellular service. Such disasters are not just an issue for the Caribbean, said the Wilson Center’s Roger-Mark De Souza in an interview with WOUB that was last month’s most read story on New Security Beat. All coastal areas of the United States, with their growing populations and vulnerable but valuable infrastructure, should be prepared to face more severe climate-related natural disasters.

As the so-called Islamic State loses control over the areas it once occupied, it is leaving behind a toxic legacy.  The initial findings of a scoping mission undertaken by UN Environment Programme’s Conflict and Disasters branch found a trail of localized pollution that could have acute and chronic consequences for Iraq—and not just for its environment.