Chile is on the cusp of a new era. Just as its lithium—a common element of energy storage technology, which is itself a critical component of the clean energy transition—is experiencing a rise in global market demand, Chilean citizens have called for a new constitution.

The United States imprisons the most women in the world. Across the United States, approximately 200,000 women are incarcerated—nearly an 800 percent increase since 1980. Women of color are disproportionately affected by the criminal justice system. In 2017, twice as many Black women and 1.3 times as many Hispanic women were incarcerated compared to white women. An often overlooked aspect of the increasing rates of women’s incarceration is the impact on the sexual and reproductive health needs of these women. “Despite being the fastest growing incarcerated population, women and girls are correctional afterthoughts,” writes Kimberly Haven, an activist and formerly incarcerated woman who had to undergo a hysterectomy—a surgical procedure to remove the uterus (and, with it, childbearing possibilities)—after being denied proper menstrual products while incarcerated.

As violence in Mali and Burkina Faso reached a ten-year high this year, the West African Sahel appears to be experiencing the perfect storm of climate stress, resource degradation, and violent extremism. At the center of that storm, one finds livestock herders—pastoralists—who are both vulnerable to environmental changes in the region, and historically marginalized from politics. Conflict in the region looks like a harbinger of the climate wars to come—but is it really? In research produced for Search for Common Ground, Andrew McDonnell and I found that while competition for land and water resources has increased dramatically across the region, violence associated with pastoralism emerges from a much more complex set of factors. Not surprisingly, the decisive conflict variable is governance.

“No single individual, discipline, sector or ministry can preempt and solve complex health problems.”

The COVID-19 pandemic underscores the importance of multisectoral action to contain and mitigate the effects of the virus. Presently, during crisis conditions or “war time,” in the language of outbreak experts, multisectoral efforts—including actions traversing health, education, labor, finance and other sectors—are readily apparent. But when policymakers perceive crises have passed, during so-called “peacetime,” governance structures that enable multisectoral collaboration tend to diminish or languish.

Rather than delve into issue opinion polling, or assess presidential campaign strategies, political demographers assume that political change is the predictable product of a set of mutually reinforcing social, economic, and demographic transitions, which can be tracked using data. But is this true in a country like the United States that has been in the advanced stages of these development transitions for decades? If these transitions are as important as demographers believe, could their variation among the 50 states explain the outcome of the recent U.S. presidential election? If so, what could they tell us about America’s electoral future?

At the initial epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic in Wuhan, China, the daily output of medical waste soared five times its average volume — from about 40 tons to as much as 250 tons at the end of February. This overwhelmed Wuhan’s single specialized medical waste treatment plant, far exceeding its 50 tons-per-day processing capacity. As the pandemic progressed throughout China, it revealed the shortfalls in medical waste management capacity in many cities. At a news conference in Beijing in March, Zhao Qunying, director of the emergency management office of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, reported that 22 cities were operating over-capacity and 28 cities were working at full or near full load.

The United States is in the midst of a maternal health crisis. Indigenous and Alaska Native peoples are 2.3 times more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications than their white counterparts. In Alaska, unequal socio-economic status, lack of access to hospitals and quality health services, systemic racism, and a history of colonization drive these disparities in maternal health outcomes. “Weathering”—the deterioration of communal health outcomes caused by persistent socio-economic disadvantages—contributes to many poor maternal health outcomes for Alaska Native women. On top of these systemic problems, climate change impacts threaten to widen the existing disparities for Alaskan Native women.

“If you’re a sea ice person, MOSAiC is the kind of experiment that you just live for,” said Don Perovich, a Dartmouth College researcher with the Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate. “It’s the kind of experiment you dream about. It’s an opportunity to spend a whole year on the ice, just watching how a floe evolves over time.” He spoke at a recent event sponsored by IARPC Collaborations, an Interagency Arctic Research Policy Committee (IARPC) member space where scientists and others involved in Arctic research share knowledge and resources. The researchers on the expedition, said Perovich, aimed to collect data that would shed light on the causes and consequences of the evolving and diminished Arctic sea ice cover. MOSAiC’s mission was to facilitate a breakthrough in understanding the Arctic climate system and improve the world’s climate and weather forecasting models.