Today’s celebration of World Wildlife Day is a perfect time to focus greater attention on the rapidly growing Latin America-to-Asia wildlife trade. It now has reached crisis proportions, with both illegal and legal shipments rising in tandem with China’s economic investment in the region.

Experts link this mushrooming trans-Pacific animal trade to large-scale development projects by Chinese companies. Over the past 15 years, two state-owned Chinese banks have loaned more than $140 billion for infrastructure, road, railway and mining projects in Latin America.

When Kevin Chen began his agricultural research 20 years ago, most dairy farms in China were small and family-owned. People of his generation did not grow up with milk deliveries or ice cream. Today, however, these farms have been replaced by massive agri-businesses raising tens of thousands of dairy cows, and dairy is a regular part of many people’s diets in China, thanks to rising incomes and years of governmental promotion of cheese, yogurt, and milk. 

Nearly a year ago, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Wilson Center’s Sarah B. Barnes spoke with Member of Parliament Kira Rudik about the impact of the war on Ukraine’s women and children. Barnes and Rudik spoke again a few days ago, as the first anniversary of the conflict approached. Their conversation touched on the current state of the war, including impacts on infrastructure, the ongoing refugee crisis, schooling for Ukraine’s children, and retaining Ukraine’s heritage.

The first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is also a reminder of the long-term challenges faced by that embattled country, including one of the most important resources for human survival: water.

“For Ukrainians, water has been under fire for nearly a decade,” observed Erika Weinthal, Professor of Environmental Policy and Public Policy at Duke University, at a recent Water @ Wilson Series event: “Water and Conflict: Updates from the Russia-Ukraine War,” co-hosted by the U.S. Water Partnership.

The Horn of Africa now faces an unprecedented drought, with conditions not seen in the last 40 years. The implications of this looming catastrophe reach beyond the most recent severe drought periods in the region, which occurred in 2010 and 2011 and again in 2016 and 2017.

As of November 2022, over 36 million people in the Horn were affected by drought, including 24.1 million in Ethiopia, 7.8 million in Somalia, and 4.2 million in Kenya. More than 20 million children in Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia need immediate water and food assistance. In addition, nearly 1 million pregnant and lactating women are acutely malnourished. Since mid-2021, more than 9.5 million livestock have perished in the region due to a lack of water, starvation, and disease.

“Too many children are dying in the first month of life,” said Richard Horton, Editor-in-Chief of The Lancet at a recent launch event for the 2023 Lancet Series on Breastfeeding, hosted by The Royal Society of Medicine, London. Indeed, the global numbers are staggering. Horton observed that 2.3 million children died in the first month of life in 2021—that’s more than 6,000 newborns dying every single day.

On February 25, Nigeria will hold its presidential election. The stakes of this ballot could not be any higher—especially for the climate. Climate change is an existential and current reality in Nigeria, and the coming decade will be crucial to meet the nation’s sustainable development goals. It will take political will to make climate justice a reality, and Nigerians now have the opportunity to choose leaders who will either make or mar the action to address this threat.

In a time of increasing urgency and regulatory restraint in U.S. climate policy, state-level climate work has been critical. States such as California, Louisiana, and Washington have taken the absence of federal policy as an opening to innovate, and responded thoughtfully and creatively to the challenge.