In Sidoarjo City, Indonesia, student river detectives catalog the microplastics they sample from the Brantas River, the longest river in East Java. Plastic waste threatens this water that seventeen million people depend on for drinking water, fishing, and irrigation. Daru Setyorini and her team from ECOTON (Ecological Observation and Wetlands Conservation) organized this program to educate youth and inform policymakers on the scope of the problem. 

“Climate change has the potential to be a very important confidence-building measure between the United States and China,” said Sharon Burke, Senior Advisor of the International Security Program and Resource Security Program at New America. “Because no matter what else is happening in our relationship, we can succeed together on climate change.” She spoke at the launch for a project co-led by the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change & Security Program and adelphi, “21st Century Diplomacy: Foreign Policy is Climate Policy.” Hosted as part of the Berlin Climate and Security Conference, the discussion focused on the “climate superpowers” section of the project.

Climate change will upend the 21^st century world order. It will redefine how we live and work, and change the systems of production, trade, economics, and finance. Even now, in the midst of a global pandemic, it is clear that climate change will be the defining issue of this century. In fact, COVID-19 has only underscored the inadequacy of our responses to global crises and heightened the urgency of this call to action. 21^st century diplomacy will have to raise climate ambition, shape the transformative systems change needed, and promote and facilitate new modes of multilateral collaboration.

In the crowded capital city of Manila, the Philippines, one quarter of the population of 15 million people has less than one dollar to spend per day. Residents depend upon the tiny and ubiquitous convenience stores, known as sari-sari stores, for daily essentials like food and hygiene products, much of which are sold in convenient single-use sachets (small plastic pouches) for just a few cents each. These sari-sari stores are the major source of the 150 million sachets used daily in the Philippines. 

When Farhad Ahma returned to his native country last year on a work trip, his first thought was of his small daughter back home. The air around him was so thick with pollution, he couldn’t imagine she would survive the climate in this region of northeastern Syria. Ahma himself struggled to breathe almost as soon as he arrived, nauseated by the heavy smell within a couple hours. He was born and raised nearby, in a city called Qamishli, but he had lived in Berlin for some time now. Returning was a shock to his system.