Iran’s southeastern province of Khuzestan—which borders Iraq—was already a dry and dangerous place. It was the site of the fiercest battles in the Iraq-Iran war which followed the Iranian Revolution in 1979, and to this day, the region still has many unexploded landmines.

Yet this legacy of violence is not the only issue facing its residents. As climate impacts mount in Khuzestan, the future looks bleak for both the region’s ecosystems and the people already living on this borderline.

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

Climate Change Disproportionately Impacts Rural Women (U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization) 

A recent report by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization analyzed data from 24 low- and middle- income countries (LMICs) across five regions and over 100 thousand rural households to measure the impacts of climate change on rural women, youth, and people living in poverty. It found that climate change’s impacts disproportionately impact households headed by women, with income losses due to extreme heat (8% income loss) and flooding (3% income loss), relative to households led by men. The income gap between men and women was also widened as a result.

When Russia launched its brutal invasion of Ukraine on February 22, 2024, Western nations supported Ukraine with military and financial aid. But over two years, the cost of the war has been devastating—not only in terms of lives lost, and injuries sustained, but also in the number of buildings destroyed. According to some estimates, more than 150K structures have been damaged in the conflict.

Individuals face immense challenges in displacement contexts, particularly where climate, conflict, and displacement intersect. In Mozambique, climate impacts have combined with conflict to displace nearly a million people. Entire livelihoods, identities, and stability are vanishing. Women, men, girls, and boys are not just losing homes; they are losing their place in traditional societal roles, too. This chaos—and responses by the international community—are reshaping Mozambique’s gender dynamics.

Iraq is incredibly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Temperatures are increasing, rainfall is decreasing, and the country experiences prolonged periods of drought. These conditions, as well as the destruction of wells and irrigation systems in the Islamic State’s (IS) targeted 2014-2017 campaign to destroy agricultural livelihoods, have created a growing water problem in Iraq’s Nineveh Plains. Indeed, water levels there have dropped low enough to subject crops to drought stress, endangering drinking water systems and affecting the ability to grow crops and raise livestock.