“That ain’t no mountain,” said Jennifer L. Turner, the Director of the Wilson Center’s China Environment Forum, in response to a picture of a pile of phosphogypsum waste just outside a farming village. She moderated a recent event on the development of environmental law and enforcement in China cohosted by the Environmental Law Institute and The Wilson Center. Since 2013, when the picture was taken, the mountain has grown, she said. She put the image up because many people hear about soil pollution, or illegal dumping, and picture something small. “You don’t picture a mountain towering over a village,” Turner said.

Water security is a pervasive climate issue and one that has increasingly been viewed as a gendered issue. Worldwide, women and girls spend 200 million hours collecting water every day. While doing so, they place themselves at increased risk of assault and become more likely to develop medical issues related to physical labor. They also pay an opportunity cost, as this time could be better spent in school or performing other productive tasks. 

A problem is looming. Most water infrastructure isn’t designed to meet the demands of the increasingly volatile world that climate change is producing. Our modern landscape requires a reconceptualization of infrastructure’s demands and needs that often defies convention. And nowhere is a flexible and responsive approach more crucial than in water infrastructure, where we are experiencing unprecedented changes in flows and increasing pressures on consumption, according to Wellspring: Source Water Resilience and Climate Adaptation, a new report from the Global Resilience Partnership, the Alliance for Global Water Adaptation and The Nature Conservancy. The report explores some ways practitioners can take a new approach to source water protection that would enhance resilience and help sustain communities and ecosystems in a shifting climate.

Rising tensions between Egypt and Ethiopia over construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) have led to speculation that there could be a war over water. When completed, the dam will be the largest in Africa. And it will give Ethiopia control over the Blue Nile River, a major source of Egypt’s water.

Climate change is being increasingly framed as a security issue—a “threat multiplier” that can amplify the risks of breakdowns in peacefulness. Yet, even extreme climate hazards do not always lead to higher levels of violence.

“We are stripping the life away from the blue planet,” said oceanographer, explorer, and author, Sylvia A. Earle. She keynoted a recent event on marine protected areas in Antarctica and the high seas co-hosted by the Wilson Center and The Pew Charitable Trusts with support from the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation. “Do we want a planet like Mars?” she said. “Most people would say, ‘I don’t think so. I like to breathe. I like water that falls magically out of the sky. I like having a living planet.’”