Approximately 200,000 women in the U.S. are incarcerated—a nearly 800 percent increase over the past forty years. An often overlooked aspect of the increasing rates of women’s incarceration is its impact on women’s sexual and reproductive health needs. In our top post this month, the Maternal Health Initiative’s Hannah Chosid writes about the overlooked needs and barriers to incarcerated women’s reproductive autonomy.

“Climate change will upend the 21^st century world order. From financial systems, migration patterns, and great power competition, to the potential unintended consequences of climate responses, and issues of inequity and the future of democracy, climate change will penetrate our systems, our relationships, and our lives in ways that we have yet to fully understand,” said Lauren Risi, Director of the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program, at a recent event co-hosted by the Wilson Center and adelphi. The panel discussion focused on two topics addressed in the recently launched 21^st Century Diplomacy project—how efforts to address climate change will engage new modes of multilateralism and how to incorporate the increasingly urgent calls for a more equitable and just world.

A powerful method for communicating and examining uncertainty, scenario planning has come to the fore in discussions on how to address COVID-19. As scenario planners continue to map the potential consequences of COVID-19, they are finding much in common with risk managers, who use past data to identify and forecast external threats. In our top post this month, Steven Gale suggests that it’s time for scenario planners and risk managers to align and join forces to produce a single foresight capability.

“Climate change has the potential to be a very important confidence-building measure between the United States and China,” said Sharon Burke, Senior Advisor of the International Security Program and Resource Security Program at New America. “Because no matter what else is happening in our relationship, we can succeed together on climate change.” She spoke at the launch for a project co-led by the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change & Security Program and adelphi, “21st Century Diplomacy: Foreign Policy is Climate Policy.” Hosted as part of the Berlin Climate and Security Conference, the discussion focused on the “climate superpowers” section of the project.

Southeast Asian countries, like the Philippines and Indonesia, generate a large amount of plastic waste each year. One item alone—single-use plastic sachets—makes up the majority of this plastic waste, littering beaches, clogging waterways, and polluting surrounding oceans. In our top spot this month, Eli Patton shares potential solutions to turn off the tap on Southeast Asia’s plastic waste problem.

Dams can be a double-edged sword, said Aaron Salzberg, a Wilson Center Global Fellow, Director of the Water Institute at the University of North Carolina, and former Special Coordinator for Water Resources for the U.S. Department of State. He spoke in a recent episode of Wilson NOW about the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, which will become Africa’s largest hydroelectric dam, once it’s fully operational.

“Reproductive justice is the right to reproductive health care, and the right to have children or not, the right to the healthiest possible pregnancy and birth, and the right to raise children in a safe and healthy environment. These rights will be challenged by climate change, including increasing temperatures,” said Linda Goler Blount, President and CEO of the Black Women’s Health Imperative, at a recent webinar on the intersections of environmental and reproductive justice on maternal health, climate change, and birth outcomes. The webinar was held on Juneteenth, the holiday commemorating the end of slavery in the United States, and many panelists’ remarks amplified the significance of the date. “Make this Juneteenth another beginning. One where we commemorate the end of climate injustice for Black and Brown people who bring life into this world,” said Blount.