“Water security and management represent the cornerstone of global conflict prevention,” said President Danilo Türk, chair of the Global High-Level Panel on Water and Peace and former president of Slovenia, at a recent Wilson Center event on water and peace. “The only alternative to water is water, and therefore, the matter of water is a matter of survival,” said Sundeep Waslekar, president of Strategic Foresight Group.

For the first time, the Joint Doctrine of the Indian Armed Forces acknowledges that the “environment has emerged as a critical area of the security paradigm,” and warns that if environmental degradation and related issues increase security risks, the military will need to respond. Released in 2017, the doctrine lists a series of non-traditional security challenges linked to the environment that could influence conflict and war, including “climate change, ecosystem disruption, energy issues, population issues, food-related problems, economic issues of unsustainable modes of production, and civil strife related to environment.” While the military has taken steps to address its impacts on the environment, it can do much more to support the nation’s environmental goals and mitigate environment-related security risks.

The Trump administration’s first National Defense Strategy, which was released last Friday, outlines the U.S. Department of Defense’s national security goals in a world it describes as rife with great power competition between the United States, Russia, and China. Climate change – which some military leaders warn poses a looming threat to the effectiveness of American military power – was not mentioned, in stark contrast to the previous administration’s strategic priorities. National security and defense strategies issued by the Obama Administration highlighted the dangers climate change poses to national security, including “increased national disasters, refugee flows, and conflicts over basic resources like food and water.”

The new year promises some big changes for the field of environmental security—and some big moves for the Environmental Change and Security Program (ECSP). As we say hello to 2018, we wave goodbye to Roger-Mark De Souza, and welcome him to our team of advisors and fellows. And I’m excited (if a bit daunted) to step into his shoes as our Acting Director and tackle the challenges to come.

Fisheries are a surprisingly common reason for conflict between countries. Between 1993 and 2010, 11 percent of militarized interstate disputes (MIDs) – conflicts short of war between two sovereign states – involved fisheries, fishers, or fishing vessels. While the conflicts often involve fresh fish, the implications for global peace and prosperity stink like fermented herring. As climate change threatens to change fish habitats, new governance strategies may be needed to prevent these “fishy MIDs” from sparking broader conflicts.

In the war-torn Jordan River Valley, we can meet the “strategic objective of reducing conflict by promoting cooperation on shared waters,” said former defense official Sherri Goodman at a recent Wilson Center event on environmental peacebuilding. Even in the midst of political disputes, Jordanians, Israelis, and Palestinians must work together to manage the scarce supplies of clean water to protect their health, their economies, and their security.

For the past few years, much of my work as a journalist has focused on wildlife and environmental crime. I’ve covered poaching busts and seizures of everything from pangolin scales and big-cat skins to rhino horn, live turtles and songbirds. I’ve reported on the Asian, African and South American markets that sell animals live, dead and in parts, and about the consumers that drive this black-market trade. I’ve written about China, the largest consumer, where many endangered species products are luxury items bought by the wealthiest and most influential as a way to flaunt power and gain prestige. I’ve also explored the trade here in the United States — the world’s second largest consumer. I covered the ubiquitous bird trade in Latin America, where ownership of pet parrots and other birds is so rampant that few realize these animals are endangered, or that it’s against the law to buy or keep them.

“Floods are one of many factors that keep massive amounts of the population in poverty and always on the brink of disaster,” said Eric Viala at the second event in a four-part series on water security organized by the Wilson Center in cooperation with the Sustainable Water Partnership, which Viala directs. Panelists at the event discussed the impact of intense flooding on vulnerable communities and proposed innovative and collaborative approaches to reducing their risks in the face of disasters.