Women and girls with disabilities worldwide are subject to multiple forms of discrimination—a fact that the 2022 International Day for Persons with Disabilities brings into sharp focus. Yet while all people with disabilities (PWD) face exclusion and widespread stigma, women face the additional burden of exclusion from full participation in economic and cultural activities. Both forms of discrimination result from the collaboration of outdated laws and prevalent societal stigmatization.

There’s a scene near the climax of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express when Hercule Poirot starts to plot out the possible murderers. There’s Colonel Arbuthnot, who had opportunity and motive. There’s Mr. McQueen, suspicious in his transparent attempts to misdirect the detective. There’s even the haughty, toad-faced Princess Dragomiroff. Like practically everyone on the train, she had good reason to wish the evil Ratchett dead.

Every year, more than two billion farmers around the world work the land day in and day out to earn a living and produce what is needed to feed and clothe an ever-growing global population that reached 8 billion in November 2022. Though they bear the brunt of climate change on the front lines, many of the world’s farmers, ranchers and fishers are unaware of the international processes that affect their livelihoods.

Cairo hoped that COP27 would focus on its stated agenda: climate change adaptation. Yet it was human rights concerns—such as jailed pro-democracy activist Alaa Abdel Fattah’s hunger strike and rumors of restricted internet access to human rights platforms—that often stole headlines from climate policy or funding pledges. The persistence of human rights coverage demonstrated that Egypt and many other governments fail to recognize that strong governance, human rights protections, and climate change adaptation are mutually reinforcing and have overlapping policy actions.

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s victory in Brazil’s presidential election on October 30, 2022—and his appearance at the COP27 summit on November 16—have put protecting the Amazon basin back on the agenda. Speaking at a Wilson Center event on November 4, Iván Duque Marquez, Former President of the Republic of Colombia and a Distinguished Fellow at the Center, highlighted why it was vital to counter the threat to this magnificent biome: “The Amazon is the most biodiverse area in the planet. The Amazon River discharges in one hour the same amount of fresh water that is consumed in a year by 7000 million people; and, at the same time, the Amazon in terms of size is twice the size of the EU and is larger than the United States without Alaska.”

The 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment marked a watershed in world environmental politics. Gathered in Stockholm, Sweden, the international community collectively recognized that the technologies and economic models that enable modern development were also driving unsustainable environmental degradation, compromising the vital natural systems on which human well-being depends.