“In the last decade, almost half of Africa’s elephants have been killed for their ivory, and some experts are predicting that both elephants and rhinoceros will be extinct by 2030,” said Nancy Lindborg, President of the U.S. Institute of Peace at a recent event on wildlife poaching and trafficking. The illegal trade in protected wildlife is worth US$7-10 billion—some of which has ended up in the pockets of armed groups like Al-Shabaab and the Lord’s Resistance Army, said Lindborg.

“Functioning natural systems are critical to human survival itself,” said Carrie Thompson, Deputy Assistant Administrator of the Bureau for Economic Growth, Education and Environment at USAID, at a recent Wilson Center event on USAID’s efforts to increase the effectiveness of its biodiversity conservation programs. Measuring Impact was designed to help support USAID’s 2014 Biodiversity Policy, which is “grounded in a recognition that human well-being and progress are dependent on the health of biodiverse systems and [that] durable development gains are not possible unless these systems are valued and safeguarded,” said Cynthia Gill, Director of USAID’s Office of Forestry and Biodiversity.

“The idea to make this film came from a very personal place,” said filmmaker Luciana Kaplan at a recent Wilson Center screening of her documentary Rush Hour, recalling how a woman who worked for her spent six hours a day on public transportation. “I have to make a film about this,” she said she told herself, “because this is a silent enemy that is attacking all of us in big cities.”

Every dollar invested in preparing for natural disasters could save seven dollars, said Alice Hill, Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, at a recent briefing on Capitol Hill. Catastrophic events like Superstorm Sandy present significant financial risks to U.S. businesses, the federal treasury, and the global economy. These complex emergencies have taught us that “everything is connected: our transportation system failed, our health sector failed,” said Hill, in the wake of these storms.

Water variability is increasing “due to climate change and to more frequent natural disasters,” said Jonathan Cook, Senior Climate Change Adaptation Specialist with the U.S. Agency for International Development, at the fourth and final event in a series on water security organized by the Wilson Center and the Sustainable Water Partnership. To solve the problem of increasingly erratic water, “business as usual is really not acceptable anymore,” said Will Sarni, founder of WetDATA.org, who called for new, innovative ideas: “Hope is not a strategy.”

“Hypertensive disorders in pregnancy are responsible for over 76,000 maternal deaths globally, killing a woman every 11 minutes,” said Charlotte Warren, Senior Associate at the Population Council, at a recent Wilson Center event about non-communicable diseases in pregnancy, held on World Preeclampsia Day.  These disorders complicate 8 to 10 percent of pregnancies worldwide and are trending upward due to increased maternal weight and sedentary lifestyles. “In low-income countries, a woman has approximately 300 times higher risk of dying of preeclampsia and eclampsia than a woman in a high-income country,” she said.