On a rainy July afternoon in 2017, I was in Jinhua, China, a city just south of Shanghai, to visit a pig farm. This was not just any pig farm—the Mebolo farm grows pigs that become the prized Jinhua Hams, a Chinese delicacy for nearly 1500 years. Long before Italians produced prosciutto and the Spanish their Jamón serrano ham, Marco Polo discovered Jinhua ham in the 13^th century and brought ham-making techniques back to Europe.

Climate-related disasters are a major source of human and material losses. Poverty and low level of economic development are important determinants of environmental vulnerability. Achieving stable and sustainable development thus represents an important strategy to reduce adverse impacts of climate change. However, present efforts to evaluate possible consequences of climate change in the future suffer from too optimistic assumptions about economic growth in poor countries, as we document in a new article just published in the journal Global Environmental Politics.

Coal has long been China’s “black gold,” supplying over half of the nation’s electricity. Yet as coal’s energy share decreases due to domestic action to reduce air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, a new coal industry is emerging. In China’s arid northwest, eight plants are pulverizing coal chunks and “cooking” coal powder into something more valuable than power—or maybe even gold. These coal conversion plants, soon numbering over 20, churn out chemicals to produce plastic.

The world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter, China, is projected to fulfill its Paris commitment to reduce the proportion of coal in its energy mix ten years ahead of schedule. However, the country remains the world’s largest producer and consumer of coal, and coal conversion practices are steadily on the rise. In this month’s top post, China Environment Forum’s Richard Liu, Zhou Yang, and Xinzhou Qian track China’s risky gamble on coal conversion.

A significant increase in fisheries-related conflicts in the Indian Ocean since 2000 is heightening regional tensions. These conflicts have ranged from purely verbal and diplomatic disputes to armed attacks on fishing vessels by coast guards and navies. These disputes are most often low-intensity, but constitute true “wild card” scenarios in which competing powers’ navies reach the brink of engagement due to the actions of third parties that they neither command nor control.