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Water @ Wilson Event | Water, Peace, & Security: New Tools for a New Climate
›Water sustains life on our planet. And access to clean and safe water is foundational to society. So why has it only been in recent years that water has risen to the top of discussions of climate and security? Richard W. Spinrad, the Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere and NOAA Administrator, says that one of the biggest reasons is the major impact that climate-related changes in precipitation like droughts and extreme rainfall are having across the globe: “We’re starting to see things like we’ve never seen before. The nature of storms is changing: We saw five feet of rain fall in Hurricane Harvey. Five feet.”
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Top 5 Posts of November 2022
›As the COP27 climate talks in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt fade from the headlines, governments are convening now at another COP in Montreal, Canada: The 15th Conference of the Parties (COP15) to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. In the most-read post for November, Jesse Rodenbiker describes how China’s active leadership as COP15 president is crucial to achieving the meeting’s central aim: The adoption of a new set of global biodiversity targets. Yet China’s role in shepherding this international forum is not without complications. Rodenbiker observes that the country’s extensive protected area program—which could influence the nature of global conservation efforts—includes controversial practices that have displaced communities and reinforced inequality.
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Mobile Clinics and Mental Health Care: The NGO Response to Ukraine’s Health Crises
›The war in Ukraine is not only displacing millions, straining the economy, and ravaging infrastructure. It’s also creating a mounting health crisis. In this week’s New Security Broadcast, ECSP’s Director Lauren Risi hears from Ambassador Daniel Speckhard and Dr. Mariia Dolynska about the health impacts created by the war in Ukraine and what is still needed to strengthen the health system—as well as what one NGO is doing to deliver healthcare in the embattled nation.
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Creating a Just Transition in Green Minerals: A New Video from the Wilson Center and its Partners
›We need minerals to build the solar panels, wind turbines, and other technologies that will decarbonize our economies—and we need a lot of them. The World Bank estimates that demand for lithium, cobalt, and graphite could jump by as much as 500 percent by 2050. Yet mining for these resources has had a fraught history, and it continues to be associated with a hefty list of human rights and conflict risks, including violence, child labor, poor working conditions, land rights abuses, environmental damage and pollution, and a lack of community participation.
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Community-centered Approaches to Green Mineral Mining: A Conversation With Pact’s Roger-Mark De Souza
›According to the World Bank, building enough renewable energy infrastructure to keep global warming below 2C will require more than 3 billion tons of minerals. Reducing emissions quickly is crucial to minimizing risk for the world’s most climate-vulnerable communities, many of whom are on the front lines of a crisis they did not create. But unless we are careful, ramping up mining in order to decarbonize could actually worsen inequity and injustice. “How do we do this quickly, safely, and sustainably, in ways that benefit all?” asks Lauren Risi, Director of the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program in this week’s New Security Broadcast.
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What Better Looks Like: Breaking the Critical Minerals Resource Curse
›In recent years, the urgency of climate action has brought fresh attention to the critical minerals sector. Growing renewable energy investments are driving up demand for resources like lithium, cobalt, and copper, which form the mineral backbone of green technologies. But there are substantial concerns to navigate when it comes to sourcing green energy minerals.
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Catastrophe and Catalyst: Pakistan’s Foreign Minister on His Nation’s Climate Tragedy
›On a recent visit to the Wilson Center, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari remarked on the historic nature of the monsoon-related floods that have submerged a huge swath of his country over the last several months.
“These are no normal monsoons and no normal floods,” said Zardari. “We are used to monsoons. We are used to floods. We have provincial mechanisms [and] national mechanisms to deal with such disasters. What we were not prepared for was for floods to descend from the sky.”
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Addressing the Global Food Crisis: CIMMYT Experts Weigh In
›The confluence of climate change, COVID-19, and the war in Ukraine have placed enormous stress on food systems across the globe. Food insecurity spiked in 2020 and has stayed high, and the number of undernourished people is on the rise.
Showing posts by Claire Doyle.