For decades, western multinational companies have been profiting by exploiting plant, animal, or microbial genetic resources obtained from less developed countries. Take the neem tree, for example. Since the 1990s, international companies have registered more than 70 patents on products derived from India’s “tree of life.” Yet these patents have prohibited local people from using these trees (as they had for centuries) to make cosmetics, fertilizers, and medicines.

International companies have now turned their eyes to the high seas in a new hunt for genetic resources. Concerned they will be left out of the potentially profitable patents once again, developing nations are demanding equitable use and benefit sharing of genetic resources in ongoing global ocean treaty negotiations.

Climate impacts are growing more frequent and severe as global temperatures rise. Weather-related disasters have seen a five-fold increase over the past half-century. In many cases, these calamities are already testing the adaptation capabilities of vulnerable communities across the world. If emissions follow the trajectory set by current country targets, the chance of temporarily overshooting the 1.5 °C target in the next five years is 48 percent.

This failure would have implications for the global economy and international security. Yet despite the fact that climate change shapes geopolitics, climate risk itself has rarely been featured in international geopolitics and diplomacy.

Which nations are most at risk of catastrophic outcomes due to intensifying ecological threats? The third edition of the Institute for Economics & Peace (IEP)’s Ecological Threat Report (ETR)—released on October 20, 2022— applies a lens of societal resilience to predict the hotspots most likely to suffer from instability and conflict in the future, and provides projections of ongoing trends to 2050.

As countries prepare to gather for the Fifteenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in December 2022, the stakes for global biodiversity couldn’t be higher. Over the last half century, global wildlife population sizes plummeted by 60 percent. A 2019 UN report, one among many, warned that the current global response to this accelerating loss of species is insufficient and that “transformative changes are needed to restore and protect nature.”

Last April, Eless Limani set out on a long and costly bicycle ride to the Mponela Health Center to get a new supply of birth control pills, her usual contraceptive. The 32-year-old mother was not ready to have a second child.

On a crisp autumn morning, the Yellow Hill Community Center in western North Carolina buzzed with excitement as more than 120 Cherokees and their allies shared conversations, laughter, and a hearty breakfast. They had descended upon the center in the Qualla Boundary on October 19, 2022 to mark the second annual Honor Long Man Day in the homelands of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI).