International organizations and media stories have showcased how civilian women and children have been the primary victims of the Israeli campaign to eliminate Hamas in Gaza in the last seven months. Yet, the focus has been on exactly that—women and children as victims of violence. Little thought has been given to what happens to Palestinian women and children in Gaza once the guns are silenced and it comes time not only to reckon with the unimaginable violence and hardship endured during the war but to rebuild their lives and communities.

Historically, efforts to mitigate climate change have taken precedence over building resilience to its impacts. But from Pakistan to the Amazon, communities on the front lines are already experiencing the devastating effects of a warming world.

In recent weeks, devastating floods have claimed the lives of over 450 people in East Africa, as heavy rains linked to El Niño and changing climate patterns overwhelmed communities and infrastructure. Similar tragedies unfolding in Brazil, Pakistan, and Afghanistan underscore the human cost of being unequipped to protect against the worst impacts of climate change.

A window into what we are reading at the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program

2024 World Migration Report Highlights Climate-Food-Mobility Nexus (International Organization for Migration)

The International Organization for Migration’s flagship World Migration Report 2024 highlights a wide variety of factors contributing to global migration, including conflict, economic or political insecurity, and climate change. Between 2020 and 2022 the number of asylum seekers increased more than 30% to 5.4 million people. The report centers climate change’s impact on food security as a core driver of migration. In 2022, 275 million people faced acute food insecurity, which represents a 146% increase since 2016.

The construction boom across Southeast Asia, driven by burgeoning urban development and infrastructure projects, vividly highlights the dual impacts of progress. For instance, the rapid expansion of road networks, ports, and urban centers, while catalyzing economic growth, has also led to significant environmental and social displacement. These projects rely heavily on sand, a fundamental component of concrete and asphalt, extracted in vast quantities from local riverbeds. Annually, this global demand reaches approximately 50 billion tons, positioning sand as the world’s most consumed resource after water. In the Vietnamese Mekong Delta alone, 50 million cubic meters of sand are extracted annually.

Environmental Prize Winners Highlight Local Communities’ Fight Against Fossil Fuels (New York Times)

On Monday, several environmental leaders won the Goldman Environmental Prize, which the Goldman Environmental Foundation awards annually to grassroots environmental activists from each of the world’s six geographic regions. This year’s prize comes as environmental advocacy groups, especially indigenous ones, increasingly fight legal battles against companies or government entities that wish to use their land for oil and gas acquisition or coal mining.

May 5th is the International Day of the Midwife. This year’s theme, “Midwives: A Vital Climate Solution,” acknowledges the role that midwives play by delivering environmentally sustainable health services, adapting health systems to climate change, and as first responders when climate-related disasters occur.  Empowering a resilient health workforce with midwives as first contacts for maternal health care can improve universal health coverage through reductions in environmental impact, as well as more efficient, less costly health systems, and stronger local economies.

Back in 2020, Shiyang Li at Rare visited restaurants across China to interview over 30 different owners and staff about the attitudes, beliefs, and everyday behaviors that contribute to food waste.  Similar to global trends, food waste in China remains a significant challenge. A 2020 survey found restaurants in Chinese cities wasted at least 34 million tons of food every year, which can feed as many as 49 million people.