An international food crisis is currently unfolding on a scale not seen since World War II. More than 20 million people in Somalia, Nigeria, South Sudan, and Yemen are in danger of famine. UN Under-Secretary-General and Emergency Relief Coordinator Stephen O’Brien said in March, “We are facing the largest humanitarian crisis since the creation of the United Nations.”

VENGANTHANKUSI, India – Vijayakumar, 51, was a successful rice grower his entire life until this rainless harvest season. Described by family and friends as a tall, steady man of few words, Vijayakumar seemed unbent by the paralyzing consequences of Tamil Nadu’s deepest drought in 140 years.

The state of the global environment is terrible – and deteriorating. The globalization of industrial production and the consumptive habits of 7 billion people have created the Anthropocene, a geologic age in which the actions of humans are the primary determinant of the Earth’s natural systems. This shift creates a profound new form of environmental interdependence, of which climate change is only the most salient example.

Water scarcity has contributed to an “arc of instability” characterized by conflict and displacement that stretches from West Africa to the Middle East, said a panel of experts at the Wilson Center on March 1. Two authors from an upcoming compilation of case studies on water security and violent conflict by World Wildlife Fund gave overviews of challenges in Nigeria and Iran and recommendations for U.S. engagement.

VILAMBUR, India – The mammoth coal-fired Cheyyur electrical station was first imagined by bankers at India’s Power Finance Corporation and senior engineers across town at the Central Electric Authority. That was in 2005, when the country was rich in fossil fuel resources and desperate for electric power. Though India mined more coal than almost any other country, endemic blackouts and brownouts enfeebled its economic prospects.

Over the last 60 years, more than two-thirds of the world’s remaining biodiversity hotspots have experienced armed conflict. The effects have been myriad, from destruction as a result of military tactics to indirect socioeconomic and political changes, like human migration and displacement. This so-called “war on wildlife” has important implications for conservation and peacebuilding efforts, according to a recent literature review published in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.

In a brief published by the Stanley Foundation, Cullen Hendrix explores how “the degradation and overexploitation of renewable sources…and unequal access to these resources” can make societies more or less susceptible to experiencing mass atrocities. Hendrix proposes that “demographic-environmental stress” is most likely to contribute to mass atrocities (genocide, war crimes, or crimes against humanity) in agricultural societies that have a high level of group identity-driven politics and economics, exclusionary political institutions, political actors that deprive certain groups, or when governments have low legitimacy.