A number of countries across North Africa, the Middle East, into Central and South Asia are “at risk of failure if they can’t get the water equation right,” said Aaron Salzberg of the U.S. Department of State, at a recent Wilson Center event celebrating 50 years of working on water’s connection to conflict and cooperation. The event brought together experts from government, NGOs, and academia for a comprehensive look at the first year of the U.S. Global Water Strategy and new research and practice on water, peace, and conflict. Either now or sometime in the near future, said Salzberg, if fundamentally water insecure countries lacking access to sustainable supplies of safe drinking water and basic sanitation do not address their water problems, they will face increased risk of failure and greater fragility.

This year, “we went from 815 million people food insecure to 821 million—for the third year in a row increasing,” said Ambassador Ertharin Cousin, referencing the latest State of Food Insecurity and Nutrition Report in a recent Smart Women, Smart Power conversation held at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Ambassador Cousin served as executive director of the World Food Program between 2012 and 2017, and before that, she served as executive vice president and chief operating officer of America’s Second Harvest, now known as Feeding America.

“The world’s ocean is not in good shape,” said Ambassador David Balton, testifying before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries, and Coast Guard, on September 18. Ambassador Balton is a Senior Fellow with the Wilson Center’s Polar Initiative. As former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Oceans and Fisheries in the Department of State, he coordinated U.S. foreign policy concerning oceans and fisheries, as well as issues relating to the Arctic and Antarctica. According to Balton, the ocean “faces three serious and interrelated challenges: unsustainable fisheries, marine pollution, and serious effects caused by climate change and related challenges such as ocean acidification.”