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

The Worsening Environmental Impact of the War in Gaza

The Gaza Strip has long been uniquely vulnerable to the climate crisis, with rapid temperature increase and decreasing rainfall plaguing this whole region. Even prior to the current conflict, NGOs in the region and the UN have warned that climate change would be devastating, particularly for food and water security in the Gaza Strip and West Bank.

A quiet agricultural community in east, central Iowa is a surprising place to learn about the evolution of communes in the United States. While a graduate student at Iowa State University, I first visited the Amana Colonies in 1979. The brick homes, the woolen mill, and the community kitchens were first built in 1855 by a group of German immigrants, forming the now oldest commune in the country.

We face a global crisis of maternal mortality that extends to untenable disparities within the United States. Yet too often, the populations most affected by such health disparities are sidelined in the creation of solutions to address them.

Tracking signs and signals is one of the hallmarks of foresight professionals. They are always on the prowl for novel products and technologies that promise to change the world. Sustainable aviation fuel made from biomass or non-biological sources like CO2 is one innovation on their radar. The increasingly popular generative AI technology is another, especially since its proponents claim it will revolutionize early disease detection, unleash new forms of creative arts, transform engineering, and reshape architecture.

“The [COVID-19] pandemic, as all of you know, severely disrupted essential health services in countries around the world, and it left many health systems reeling from the drain on resources,” said Nidhi Bouri, Assistant Administrator for Global Health at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) at a recent Wilson Center event to assess lessons learned in coping with the stressors created by the global health crisis.

Severe flooding is a major cause of human displacement. According to the latest annual report by the International Displacement Monitoring Centre, around 61 million people were forced to move within their country of residence during 2022 due to conflict or disasters. More than one quarter of these—19.2 million people—were displaced by floods.

On the same day Japan began wastewater releases from the Fukushima nuclear power plant in late August 2023, the website of China’s customs agency announced the country would “completely suspend the import of aquatic products originating from Japan.”

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

Severe Water Crisis in Gaza

As intensive coverage of the war in Gaza has waned, the severe water crisis there has only worsened. Constant bombardment is impacting water production and distribution networks, forcing children and families are using water from unsafe sources.