Blogs & Opinions


Women Are the Key to Unlocking Peace

Jun 30, 2019 | Isha Tembe

The adoption of UN Security Resolution 1325 was supposed to be a turning point for women as it affirmed that women hold a unique experience…


Gender, Indigenous Peoples and Poverty in Latin American NDCs

Jun 27, 2019 | Paz Gonzalez and Yanina Nemirovsky

Indigenous perspectives are important to the design and implementation of climate policies and here’s why. Indigenous people contribute to the conservation of 80% of the…


Water Wars: A Sinking Feeling in Philippine-China Relations

Jun 27, 2019 | Sean Quirk

Philippine and Chinese officials will launch a joint investigation into the at-sea collision that left 22 Filipino fishermen stranded in the South China Sea. On…


Women Defenders of the Land and the Environment: Silenced Voices

Jun 27, 2019 | Oxfam

The expansion of large scale mining activities and agribusiness in Latin America has greatly increased territorial disputes and resulted in an alarming rise in violence…


How Climate Change Drives Conflict in Africa

Jun 26, 2019 | Fatima Moosa

Climate change is fast becoming a reality that no person or government can ignore. Yet it is being ignored despite the myriad of ways it…


Why Some Rebel Groups Force Kids to Fight: It Depends on How They Are Funded

Jun 26, 2019 | Roos van der Haer, Beth Elise Whitaker, and Christopher Michael Faulkner

To sustain their operations, armed groups must have a steady supply of recruits. These serve to fill their fighting ranks and to replace those lost…


Kenyan Tribe Divided Over Women's Land Rights After Landmark Ruling

Jun 25, 2019 | Dominic Kirui

A few months ago, the idea of coming home with a hoe in one hand and a sack of freshly harvested potatoes in the other…


Towards a More Resilient Afghanistan

Jun 25, 2019 | Julian Palma and Ditte Fallesen

Across Afghanistan’s vast diversity of natural terrain, communities share a similar complaint: intense and recurring natural hazards too often cause the loss of lives, livelihoods,…


High-Level Roundtable in Jordan: Discussing Humanitarian Policy in Light of Climate Security

Jun 25, 2019 | Planetary Security Initiative

On 19 June, 2019, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Jordan Red Crescent Society (JRCS) co-hosted a policy roundtable on climate…


What Food Price-Related Protests in Sudan and Liberia Tell Us about How Autocracies and Democracies Address Price Crises

Jun 25, 2019 | Cullen S. Hendrix

As one of the world’s most talented footballers of the 1990s, Liberian President George Weah is no stranger to roaring crowds. But recently, these crowds were…


Women's Land Rights: a Journey to Understand Nuances and Explore Challenges

Jun 20, 2019 | Aditya Chaturvedi

Journeys that compel us to introspect and leave us stunned are not beatific odysseys or intrepid sagas peppered with swashbuckling antics, but there is unvarnished…


Serving Refugee Communities with Tech, Energy Access, Entrepreneurship: Mastercard and USAID’s Collective Approach

Jun 19, 2019 | Katrina Pielli and Sasha Kapadia

As we mark World Refugee Day 2019 (June 20) and reflect on the fate of displaced communities all around the world, we are convinced, now…


Climate Change Poses Security Risks, According to Decades of Intelligence Reports

Jun 18, 2019 | Dana Nuccitelli

Intelligence analysts have agreed since the late 80s that climate change poses serious security risks. Aseries of authoritative governmental and non-governmental analyses over more than…


We’ll Never Solve Immigration If We Don’t Solve Climate Change

Jun 18, 2019 | Penny Pritzker

In the recent standoff between the U.S. and Mexico, the Trump administration commingled the issues of trade and immigration. This is the wrong approach, and…


Water for Peace and Development

Jun 17, 2019 | Nisar A Memon

Life without water is inconceivable. Humans are born in water and their body contain about 65 percent water. Life on any planet is not viable…


Water Wars: How Scarcity Exacerbates Conflict

Jun 15, 2019 | Oliver Lees

Around the world, water scarcity is increasingly changing the face of conflict. Beyond its being essential to human survival – one can only live a…


A 'Responsibility to Prepare': A Strategy for Presidential Leadership on the Security Risks of Climate Change

Jun 14, 2019 | Caitlin Werrell, Francesco Femia, and John Conger

Presidential candidates are offering their plans on climate change, and it’s a competition over who’s the most ambitious. That’s good news, given that it’s a major…


Webinar Series: Science Diplomacy and Environmental Peacebuilding

Jun 13, 2019 | Dhanasree Jayaram

Environmental peace building has emerged as a new frontier in interdisciplinary studies, which seeks to go beyond the traditional role of natural resources or environmental…


Inclusive Protection of Civilians During Conflicts: Making a Case for the Environment

Jun 12, 2019 | Wim Zwijnenburg

It is important to take an inclusive and tangible approach to protecting civilians by protecting the environment during armed conflicts. In recent decades, the link…


Colombia's Land Disputes: What the Life and Death of Hugo George Taught Me

Jun 12, 2019 | Mariana Calvo

Hugo George is one of the hundreds of social leaders who have been murdered in Colombia during its peace process. He was also my friend.

I…


Three Surprising Solutions to Climate Change

Jun 10, 2019 | Jeff McMahon

When the analysts at Project Drawdown quantified the impact of 100 solutions to climate change, they were surprised by some of their results, the organization's executive…


3 Pentagon Strategy Documents in 3 Months Highlight Climate Change Risks

Jun 10, 2019 | Caitlin Werrell and Francesco Femia

From April to June of this year, the U.S. military has issued not one, but three strategy documents that highlight climate change risks to the…


The River Is Life

Jun 10, 2019 | Chocó River Stories

For communities living along the Río Atrato, ‘the river is life’. Rivers play a central role in the cultural, economic and social life of the…


The Nature of Social Justice Advocacy and Local Resistance to Land Concession in Liberia: Impact on Land Governance System, Customary Land Rights and State Response

Jun 10, 2019 | Baba Sillah

One of the decisive moments in social justice advocacies for land rights in the recent history of Liberia came in 2011, when rural communities, wrote…


Women as Climate Action Ambassadors in Coastal Districts of India's Odisha State

Jun 7, 2019 | UN Environment

People in the coastal districts of the eastern Indian state of Odisha are increasingly suffering from the effects of climate change. Most households in the…


It's Time for the U.N. Security Council to Take on Climate Change

Jun 7, 2019 | Gregory Meeks and Michael Shank

This year, the United Nations Security Council debated, once again, climate change’s concrete impact on peace and security, noting that climate risks are a reality for…


Reducing Greenhouse Gases Is a Security Issue

Jun 7, 2019 | Joshua Busby

Fifteen years ago, luck would change the trajectory of my professional career. I was a predoctoral fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC, so…


27 Women Leading the Charge to Protect Our Environment

Jun 6, 2019 | Veronique Hyland, Naomi Rougeau and Julie Vandal

Scientists have called our current, climate change–threatened era the Anthropocene, but as the eco-economist Kate Raworth once joked, women are left out of the narrative…


Why More Women Should Be Included in the Leadership of Virunga National Park

Jun 6, 2019 | Judith Verweijen, Janvier Murairi, and Esther Marijnen

Since 2014, the number of female park guards serving in Virunga National Park, located in war-ridden eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, has been gradually…


Champions for Change: The Power of Women Peacemakers and Peacebuilders in Ukraine

Jun 3, 2019

In 2009, Ambassador Ertuğrul Apakan sat in the United Nations Security Council when then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton presided over a debate on…