In 1995, World Bank official Ismail Serageldin warned that “the wars of the next century will be fought over water—unless we change our approach to managing this precious and vital resource.” Since then, the world’s water resources have come under ever-greater strain. At the same time, institutional frameworks for managing water resources remain weak throughout most of the globe. Only about a quarter of the world’s international river basins have adequate governance arrangements to prevent and resolve conflicts. Does this mean that we can expect the 21^st century to be wracked by water wars?

“Alaska is a place in which climate change is already impacting us in very observable ways,” says Byron Mallott, the  Lieutenant Governor of Alaska, in a video interview with Wilson Center NOW.  “We have erosion from sea ice leaving the coast. We have patterns of weather change. We have, in the North Pacific Ocean, ocean water change [and] temperature changes taking place. We have ocean acidification moving further north. We have had impact on fisheries already—economic impact.”

While the pangolin’s thick overlapping scales protect it from predators such as lions, this animal is an easy mark for illegal wildlife traffickers. Image courtesy of the Tikki Hywood Foundation, Zimbabwe.

Acting on a tip, Nigerian customs operatives raided an apartment in the southwest city of Ikeja in February. Inside, they found some 4,400 pounds of pangolin scales, and 218 ivory tusks—and arrested a Chinese suspect, Ko Sin Ying, who lived there.

A few months earlier, at the other end of a well-worn trade route, Chinese customs officials made the largest-ever seizure of pangolin scales in the port of Shenzhen. They discovered an “empty” shipping container that had come in from Africa—stuffed with 13 tons of scales. They were packaged in bags that camouflaged their true contents beneath a veneer of charcoal. That haul had killed an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 animals, each about as big as a medium-sized dog.

“When you enable a family to be able to time and space their children, you actually improve the overall health of that family,” said Dr. Alma Golden, the Deputy Assistant Administrator of USAID’s Bureau for Global Health, at a recent Wilson Center event on the role of faith-based organizations in family planning. Faith-based groups are an “irreplaceable asset,” said Dr. Golden, when it comes to fighting stigma and marginalization and promoting positive health behaviors.

Iraqi Kurdistan is blessed with abundant water resources, but these resources are under increasing stress. Changing demographics, dam building in neighboring countries, and drought have driven Kurdish hydropolitics to a critical juncture where two distinct water futures are possible—and both have implications for regional stability and for U.S. interests.

In June 2016, the government of the Chinese city of Xiantao cancelled an incineration project following protests by residents who felt they were not adequately consulted before the project was approved. As growing Chinese cities produce more construction and consumer waste, incineration projects have increased—along with widespread protests of their environmental and health consequences.

Today, African leaders agree that Africa has a great opportunity to reap economic benefits from strategic investments made in the continent’s current large youthful population. The “demographic dividend” is the accelerated economic growth that can result from improved reproductive health, a rapid decline in fertility, and the subsequent shift in population age structure. With more people in the labor force and fewer children to support, a country has a window of opportunity—but only if the right social and economic investments and policies are made in health, education, governance, and the economy. 

In sub-Saharan Africa, “more than half of the men under the age of 35 do not know their [HIV] status and are not on treatment,” said Dr. Sean Cavanaugh of the Office of the Global AIDS Coordinator at a recent Wilson Center event on engaging the faith community in reaching young men and boys with HIV prevention services.  Consequently, men often don’t seek HIV services promptly, decreasing their rates of antiretroviral therapy and viral suppression, and increasing HIV mortality rates.