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Climate Change and Farmers-Herders Conflict in Nigeria
›International attention often focuses on ethnic conflict in the Niger Delta and religious conflict in Northern Nigeria, leaving farmer-herdsmen overlooked. In Nigeria, the conflict between farmers and herders has posed severe security challenges and has claimed far more lives than the Boko Haram insurgency. The conflict has threatened the country’s security, undermined national stability and unity, killed and displaced hundreds of thousands of people, and increased ethnic, regional, and religious polarization.
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The Fight for Climate After COVID-19: A Conversation With Sherri Goodman and Author, Alice Hill
›The impacts of COVID-19 have shown policymakers that we need to invest in infrastructure and shore up existing systems to ensure that they can withstand changing conditions over time, says Alice Hill, former special assistant to President Barack Obama and current senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Resilience, in this week’s New Security Broadcast. “As we go forward, we need to have resilient systems. But we haven’t done that yet, we’re unprepared.” Hill sat down with Sherri Goodman, Senior Fellow at the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program and former U.S. Deputy Undersecretary of Defense, to her new book, The Fight for Climate After COVID-19, and how the response to COVID-19 can inform approaches to building climate resilience.
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Women’s Work is Essential and Undervalued During the COVID-19 Pandemic
›“Nearly 70 percent of the lowest wage workers in the United States are women,” said Nicole Berner, General Counsel to the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) at a recent event on the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on women and essential workers, hosted by the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership.
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Today’s Top Global Scenarios Share Similarities and Noteworthy Differences, Including Beijing’s Role
›Guest Contributor // November 9, 2021 // By Steven Gale, Ana Fernandes, Krystel Montpetit & Alanna MarkleThis past March, the U.S. National Intelligence Council (NIC) offered five scenarios for global development in 2040. Two months later, the OECD released three scenarios for the future of global cooperation in 2035. Curious development professionals and others who like to peer into the future are no doubt asking: How does each organization see the future? Are the scenarios similar, different, closely aligned or wildly divergent?
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Integrating Environmental Protection and Conflict Prevention: Risk, Resilience, and Community Solutions
›“The world’s least resilient countries—when faced with ecological stress—are more likely to face civil unrest, political instability, social fragmentation, and economic collapse,” said Cynthia Brady, ECSP Global Fellow and Senior Advisor, at an event hosted by the Alliance for Peacebuilding. These “vulnerabilities are clearly mutually reinforcing, but some of the solutions are mutually reinforcing too,” said Brady. The critical challenge now is to bridge the gap between traditionally siloed communities of practice in conflict prevention and conservation.
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New Wilson Quarterly Features Expert Insights on Climate Migration
›“Supporting the talents and potential of the refugees of today could lead to empowering the scientists, leaders, and innovators of the future. Instead of a lost generation, we have the opportunity to build a thriving generation full of promise,” says Abdullah II Ibn Al Hussein, King of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, in the forward of the Fall Wilson Quarterly (WQ), “Humanity in Motion: Scenes from the Global Displacement Crisis.”
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Hitting the Brakes on Plastics in China’s Food Delivery Industry: Q&A with Zheng Xue and Sherry Lu of Plastic Free China
›China Environment Forum // Q&A // November 4, 2021 // By Solange Reppas, Mingwei Zhu, Tongxin Zhu & McKenna PotterIn every Chinese city, there is an army of motorcycles and mopeds weaving through the traffic jams, and sometimes even venturing on sidewalks, to deliver millions of food and e-commerce orders each day. Meituan, one of China’s most popular food delivery apps, delivers 30 million orders a day, serving up 100 million plastic containers. According to Greenpeace, e-commerce and express delivery in China generated 9.4 million tons of packaging waste in 2018 and will likely triple to 41.3 million tons by 2025. -
Suicide and Overdose: The Leading Causes of Death for New Mothers
›A new movie — A Mouthful of Air – was released in 800 theaters around the country on Friday, October 29. SPOILER ALERT: The storyline is about maternal depression and suicide.
This is an excellent example of art meeting life.
Mental health conditions – primarily anxiety and depression – are the most common complications of pregnancy and childbirth, affecting 1 in 5 pregnant or postpartum parents. Tragically, suicide and overdose are the leading causes of death for women in the first year following pregnancy.