“You can look into the future a couple decades and get a very good idea about where countries are going,” said Richard Cincotta during a presentation at the National Defense University last summer – at least when it comes to demography.

Despite the threat posed by flooding and sea-level rise, relatively little attention has been paid to the potential for environmentally induced instability in coastal West African cities. However, current trends, including rapid population growth, land use patterns, and increasing climate impacts, suggest the costs of inaction in these urban areas are rising.

To date, there have been two proposed responses to climate change: mitigation, aimed at stopping the buildup of greenhouse gases, and adaptation, focused on accommodating ourselves to a warmer world. There is a third option, however, that is increasingly relevant: suffering.

When she finished her dissertation on migration as a response to climate change in 2003, it was one of only a handful of scholarly papers published on the topic that year, said Susana Adamo, an associate research scientist at Columbia University’s Center for International Earth Science Information Network. But in the decade since, interest in climate migration has exploded – in 2012, more than 10 times as many papers were published. [Video Below]

When Pakistan makes the news, more often than not it’s for one of two things: violent extremism or drone strikes. Adil Najam, a Pakistan expert and a lead author for the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, says those headlines distract from a far more pressing security concern for the country: climate change.

Climate change poses a serious threat to U.S. national security and is becoming a “catalyst for conflict” in vulnerable countries, according to a panel of retired military leaders speaking at the Wilson Center on May 15. [Video Below]

“We have a fairly unique moment in the history of the world,” said Steven Philip Kramer, a professor at National Defense University, at the Wilson Center on April 17. “There’s never been a time when people have voluntarily produced fewer children than is necessary for sustaining the population.” [Video Below]

Will climate change cause conflict? That question, which has sparked heated debates in academia and the media, resists simple answers. But is climate change already contributing to conflict in some places? If so, how exactly? And more importantly, what should be done about it? These questions were the focus of a 2013 preliminary report produced for USAID by international development firm Tetra Tech ARD, which examines the climate-conflict nexus in Uganda, Ethiopia, and Peru.