The summer of 2023 featured some of the hottest days ever recorded. Feminists should be alarmed. 

Climate change may not seem like a feminist issue on its face. A warming planet poses a cross-cutting and common threat. But the perception that climate impacts result in uniform harm produces partial solutions that neglect the world’s most vulnerable populations. This alone makes environmental justice a gender justice issue as well.

I flew into Tel Aviv last Friday afternoon, primed for a week of meetings with Israeli and Palestinian environmentalists and officials. By sounding out these men and women in Jerusalem, the West Bank, and other parts of the region, I hoped to expand on past explorations of their transboundary cooperation, widely recognized as a model for environmental peacebuilding. Through an articulation of the successes that they––and their Jordanian peers–have had in bolstering water access, renewable energy, and environmental protection across their shared natural landscape, I was looking forward to telling a positive environmental conflict story—particularly one in a place that is often bereft of good news.

The UN Environment Programme has described Africa as the most vulnerable region in the world to climate change. Despite only being responsible for 3% of global emissions, the continent has been battered by extreme weather events, including droughts, cyclones, wildfires, and sandstorms. One in three people across Africa faces water scarcity. The continent’s agricultural sector, which represents a significant share of African countries’ GDP and employment, is highly exposed to climate change.

When COP28 begins in the United Arab Emirates in late November of this year, the multifaceted connections between climate and conflict are expected to receive greater attention from participants than they have at previous conferences.  

While there is scant direct causal evidence to suggest that climate change causes conflict, there is a growing body of information that it can influence the risk of conflict by hurting economies, changing broad patterns of human behavior and movement, and straining social cleavages.  

Senior Western officials have received “sobering” reports on the counteroffensive  in Ukraine. As both sides continue to rain artillery shells and missiles across the country, Ukrainian forces have struggled to make progress on the front lines in both the south and the east.

Meanwhile, a different but related struggle is occurring across the country. Ukraine’s environment is being poisoned by the by-products of this war; polluting the land, water, and air, and exposing humans, plants, and animals to high levels of toxins. 

African informal migration to Europe raises human insecurity issues for states in both Africa and Europe. This challenge was underscored almost a decade ago by the arrival of about a million migrants and refugees on the shores of Europe.

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

Fixing the World’s Broken Food Systems

The United Nations summit on the state of the world’s food systems took place in Rome, Italy, this week, building on the work of a previous convening in 2021. The meeting focused on the environmental impact of agriculture and making food production more sustainable.