“The gender perspective highlights how pre-existing inequalities and vulnerabilities are exacerbated in conflict and in disasters,” said Susanne Kozak, a doctoral candidate at Monash University at a recent event hosted by the Environmental Peacebuilding Association and University of Melbourne’s Faculty of Science.

In Kenya, primary and secondary school students take courses called Life Skills Education. So do students in Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, and Swaziland. South Sudan adds “peace-building” to the subject title. Lesotho, Madagascar, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia are more direct. These countries add the word “sexuality” to the course name.

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.

Scientists agree that many countries in tropical, subtropical, and arid regions should expect changes to water availability and supply from climate change. The U.S. intelligence community has likewise warned of water-driven challenges not only for countries directly affected by water changes, but indirectly to various U.S. national security interests. Perhaps not surprisingly then, the popular literature has been quite clear about prophesizing wars over water.

In 1981, Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen noted that “starvation is the characteristic of some people not having enough food to eat. It is not the characteristic of there being not enough food to eat.” Sen was referring to the idea that hunger is not always related to food supply; even in places where ample food exists, many people do not have regular access to it. Yet, more than three decades later, research into the effects of agriculture on armed conflict is still focused much more on the former than the latter.

An international food crisis is currently unfolding on a scale not seen since World War II. More than 20 million people in Somalia, Nigeria, South Sudan, and Yemen are in danger of famine. UN Under-Secretary-General and Emergency Relief Coordinator Stephen O’Brien said in March, “We are facing the largest humanitarian crisis since the creation of the United Nations.”

2016 was an eventful year for the continent of Africa, with important implications for U.S.-Africa relations. The Wilson Center’s Africa Program asked experts, scholars, and policymakers to weigh in on the most important and impactful events. This collection of essays reflects on those developments and their impact going forward.