The UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction recently released the fifth edition of the Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction (GAR19). The report highlights the increasingly complex interaction between hazards, and provides an update on how risk and risk reduction are understood in practice. GAR19 also highlights how the latest Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) framework integrates into global goals such as the Paris Agreement and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. To better understand the scope and significance of this report, New Security Beat sat down with Roger Pulwarty, Senior Scientist at NOAA, and a lead author of the GAR19.

Climate change is a risk, said Maurice Amollo, a Mercy Corps Chief of Party in Nigeria Mercy Corps. “But it is also an opportunity if people come together.” He spoke at a recent USAID Adaptation Community Meeting, “Tackling the threat multiplier: Addressing the role of climate change in conflict dynamics.” The discussion focused on USAID’s Peace III initiative that Amollo and Mercy Corps implemented in the Karamoja region along the borders of Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia, and Uganda, where climate and conflict shocks are part of daily life for pastoralist ethnic groups. Addressing climate and conflict issues in these regions will require using the environment to build cooperation and peace, said Eliot Levine, the Director of Mercy Corps’ Environment Technical Support Unit.

Fires are proliferating. By the end of September, over 4,500 active fires had been detected in Syria during 2019. From May through June, 2,106 of these fires burned in northeastern Syria—Raqqa, Deir ez-Zour, and Al-Hasakeh – as documented by the nongovernmental organization, REACH. Meanwhile, widespread fires in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest caused global alarm. World leaders are becoming increasingly concerned about the environmental threats posed by increased fires, but Syria’s fires may also be linked to security threats.

The Arctic is changing, and it’s changing fast, even faster than models had predicted. The most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report found with strong confidence that the Arctic is warming two to three times faster than the global average.

“We don’t have a world water crisis, we have a world water management crisis,” said Brigadier General Gerald Galloway (U.S. Army Ret.) at the 2nd National Drought Forum, hosted by the National Integrated Drought Information System and the National Drought Resilience Partnership at the United States Institute of Peace. The Forum brought together subject matter experts with federal and state leaders to discuss how to strengthen the state-federal relationship to improve U.S. drought readiness and resilience.

With on average one pangolin poached from the wild every five minutes, this scaly anteater is the most highly trafficked animal in the world. Despite an international trade ban and millions of dollars of education campaigns, the killing of the pangolin for food and medicines continues unabated. In particular, the use of its scales in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is a large driver of demand.

September 12, 2019 marks one year since South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir and former Vice President-turned-opposition leader Riek Machar signed a new peace agreement. The human and environmental cost of the five-year war it ended has been staggering. Women and girls have often borne the brunt of the violence. Fighting and displacement have also placed tremendous pressure on the country’s abundant wildlife and natural resources. Militarized cattle raiding and competition over access to traditional grazing lands threaten the country’s tenuous stability. Gender-sensitive environmental peacebuilding promises to be one of the strategies needed to resolve these multiple challenges.

Policymakers and emergency managers tend to build a conceptual wall between natural hazards and terrorism. The causes of—and remedies for—these two kinds of disasters are seen as separate and distinct. But, in the era of climate change, the wall between the two is crumbling.