In the top read post for July, Marisa O. Ensor offers the case for using “Positive Peace” as a framework for analyzing the resilience of countries and communities suffering from climate stress and resource challenges. The 2019 Global Peace Index, produced by the Institute for Economics and Peace, factors climate change into its assessments and finds that climate change and resource availability can create or exacerbate tensions, but they can also be a source for cooperation.

 In another of the month’s top posts, Taylor Dimsdale offers a look into how the rise of electric vehicles has the potential to shift the geopolitical landscape of natural resources and manufacturing. A drop in oil consumption could shift the balance of power between energy producers and consumers, while the extraction and trade in minerals like cobalt, nickel, lithium could become new sources of conflict.

“We are stripping the life away from the blue planet,” said oceanographer, explorer, and author Sylvia Earle at the Wilson Center’s June 27 event. She and a panel of experts came together to relay the value of new marine protected areas in the Antarctic, and were featured in two of our top posts for July. These areas are vital to protect biodiversity from krill to apex predators, writes Shawn Archbold. McKenna Coffey, meanwhile, discusses how the marine protected areas bring together diplomacy and science to protect biodiversity.

Finally, Annalise Blum looks at the potential for cooperative water governance in the Nile River basin. Egypt and Ethiopia are in a stalemate over filling the reservoir of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. Filling it too quickly could cut into amount of water flowing into Egypt, devastating farmland. The ad hoc Blue Nile forecast group, composed of researchers from Johns Hopkins University, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and University of California-Santa Barbara, are providing politically independent, science-based forecasts of the river’s flow with the hopes it can inform constructive negotiations.

1. When Climate Change Meets Positive Peace by Marisa O. Ensor

2. Redefining Geopolitics in the Age of Electric Vehicles by Taylor Dimsdale

3. How Protecting the Antarctic Marine Life Could Help Save the Blue Planet by Shawn Archbold

4. High Seas Biodiversity Treaty Would Prioritize Conservation by Mckenna Coffey

5. Nile River Water Supply Forecasts May Reduce the Chance of Conflict by Annalise Blum