This week, newly minted Secretary of Defense James Mattis joined a long list of senior U.S. military leaders who have warned about the national security threats of climate change.

The intelligence community’s landmark Global Water Security assessment in 2012, warned of major water-driven challenges to U.S. national security. The combined assessment of several intelligence agencies foresaw many challenges to U.S. policy objectives and national security arising from protracted drought, declining water quality, and more natural disasters in countries important to U.S. interests. The intelligence community further warned of rising social instability, cross-border tensions, and a steady drain of resources away from other development objectives. These warnings have proven prescient.

“Midwives play a vital role in the health care of mothers and babies,” said Samara Ferrara, a midwife from Mexico, at the Wilson Center on February 27. But in many parts of the world they face a confluence of stressors that make working conditions miserable: low and irregular pay; harassment and disrespect from both patients and doctors; and little supplies, training, or say in the policy dialogue about maternal health.

As the 1990s drew to a close, there was a sense that much of the momentum gained at the first Earth Summit on sustainable development, a positive, affirming environmental narrative, was waning.

In recent months, the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) has been in the headlines – and for all the wrong reasons.

As climate change threatens the stability of ecosystems around the world, the preservation of forests is seen as a “win-win” solution to curbing planet-warming emissions while producing value for developing country economies.

Global poverty has been reduced dramatically over the past two decades. Less than 11 percent of the world’s population were living in extreme poverty in 2013 compared to 35 percent in 1990. But improvements have largely come in stable countries. Many of the remaining pockets of extreme poverty are in “fragile states,” countries that are vulnerable to internal and external shocks and can easily tip into crisis when faced with an environmental, economic, social, or political change.