World Bank President David Malpass announced his resignation in mid-February 2023, and will step down by June 2023—about a year before finishing his five-year term. As several public officials indicated after the announcement, the climate legacy Malpass leaves behind is lacking. Indeed, the Bank itself has also been under scrutiny with recent calls for reform on climate finance.

The Biden Administration quickly announced Ajay Banga as their nominee in mid-February. If confirmed, Banga will step into this role in a high-profile moment, and his own stance on climate issues is already under close examination.

“War is central to history. History has been written (and painted) by men. This exhibition provides a platform for women narrators of history and also examines gendered perspectives of war,” said art curator Monika Fabijanksa, referring to the exhibit “Women at War” she recently put together, which was on display at the Stanford in Washington Art Gallery from January through March 2023.

Links between water and conflict seem to crop up everywhere one looks these days. The Horn of Africa will soon face a sixth consecutive failed rainy season in 2023—its worst drought on record. Not only is this drought a consequence of global climate change, but it has also led to widespread food shortages and local civil conflicts. And over the past year in Ukraine, Russian troops have directly damaged that nation’s already vulnerable water systems, including pipelines, pumping stations, and treatment facilities. These repeated attacks on water infrastructure have not only undermined local livelihoods in Ukraine, but they have also polluted surface waters and threatened biodiversity.

In recent decades, the international system has undergone profound changes—especially in terms of the types of threats that destabilize international peace and security. As new threats emerge, a focus on new dimensions of the concept of security is now reaching the top of the international agenda. In this context, the global freshwater crisis is beginning to be perceived as an existential threat to states requiring extraordinary measures to alleviate or solve the problem.

Waters that cross international political borders can drive the countries that share them to conflict—or encourage cooperation between them. Indeed, since the 1940s, overall trends point to a tendency for countries to cooperate over shared water resources, which stands in stark contrast to media portrayals of “water wars.”

Yet instances of conflict over water have increased slightly since 2000. Why? Most of them are fueled by water quantity disputes or the unilateral development of dams or other infrastructure. Institutions often play a key role in facilitating cooperation (and reducing conflict) over shared waters, but their growth and adoption have slowed over the last two to three decades.

At a recent Wilson Center event on the shifting geopolitics of critical minerals, Cory Combs, Associate Director at Beijing-based Trivium China, noted that “the nature of global resource competition is changing—and quite rapidly.”

By 2050, two-thirds of the population will face some form of water stress. As a fundamental part of life, water—or a lack of it—influences other parts of life, including conflict. In fact, as author Marcus King notes in his new book, Weaponizing Water: Water Stress and Islamic Extremist Violence in Africa and the Middle East, there is a “correlation between the spheres of influence of violent extremist organizations (VEOs) and the driest lands or areas of sparse vegetation in some of the most arid regions on earth.”