“The message of the report we are issuing today is clear: health equity and gender equality have a unique and powerful ability to contribute to peace,” said Finland’s former President Tarja Halonen at the recent launch event at the Wilson Center for a new report by the Lancet Commission on peaceful societies through health equity and gender quality.

When catastrophic floods struck civil war-ridden Libya in the late summer of 2023, the catastrophe caused over 10,000 deaths and wreaked immense destruction throughout the nation’s northeastern regions. But because none of the warring factions were in full control of the country and international responders were concerned about being caught in the crossfire, relief efforts were delayed and limited. This confluence of factors amplified human suffering, particularly in Libya’s remote and worst-affected areas.

In the wake of Storm Daniel, which hit Libya in September 2023, ECSP spoke with Wilson Center Global Fellow Peter Schwartzstein about the storm’s tragic fallout and its connection to conflict. As an environmental journalist and consultant, Schwartzstein has written extensively about the climate-conflict nexus and other environmental and geopolitical issues, primarily in the Middle East, North and East Africa.

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

Converging Crises: Pakistan Flood Victims Face Rising Hunger

According to FAO, Pakistan ranks among the top-ten world producers of wheat, cotton, sugarcane, and mango—and it is the 10^th largest producer of rice. But Pakistan is also atop another world ranking: vulnerability to the impacts of global warming.

Known as “Earth’s kidneys,” wetlands provide a variety of ecological benefits: habitats for diverse species, flood containment, pollutant purification, and carbon absorption. But in China, wetland loss and degradation has exposed people to the whims of climate change. What has China done to protect its wetlands, and how should the country better adapt to climate change with wetlands—a “Great Wall” made of mudflats, mangroves, and waterbirds? Jianbin Shi and Xiaojing Gan, two China-based wetland experts from the Paulson Institute, may enlighten us.

In 2021, US Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III referred to climate change as an “existential threat”—a term traditionally reserved for nuclear weapons. Yet two years and several strategic plans later, tangible progress to mitigate and prepare for this threat remains elusive, especially on the international scale where the greatest impacts could be realized.

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

Treading Water: Why Were Libya’s Floods So Devastating? 

This week’s devastating disasters in Morocco and Libya underscore the cascading effects of environmental shocks (and in the case of Libya, climate-related shocks), as well as the cross-sectoral response needed to comprehensively address the damage.