A window into what we’re reading at the Stimson Center’s Environmental Security Program

A Water Security Crisis Grips Pakistan’s Indus Delta (Al-Jazeera)

The Indus delta in Pakistan is experiencing severe environmental collapse as seawater intrusion makes farming and fishing impossible. Salinity levels have risen 70% since 1990, forcing tens of thousands from coastal districts. Over 1.2 million people from the broader delta region have abandoned their homes in the past two decades. The construction of irrigation canals and hydropower dams, compounded by the impacts of climate change on glacial melt, has accelerated the crisis and reduced downstream flow by 80% since the 1950s. More than 16% of fertile Indus delta land has become unproductive, as salt crusts cover the ground and boats must transport drinking water to the region’s remaining villages.

The numbers are staggering. A third of the food produced in the world is lost or wasted—from farms and food processing factories to grocery stores, restaurants, and homes. This growing mountain of rotting food is a major methane emitter, accounting for 8 to 10 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. If food waste were a country, it would be the third largest greenhouse gas emitter, with the United States and China as leading food wasters. 

Somalia’s new Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC)—the country’s roadmap for climate mitigation and adaptation—does more than outline the country’s climate ambitions. It recognizes the connections between climate change and conflict and charts a course for peace.

The Mekong River’s seasonal floods nurture the world’s most productive inland fishery and irrigate rice paddies that feed millions. Approximately 70 million people live in the lower Mekong Basin, and 75% of them depend on fishing and farming for their livelihoods. But hydropower expansion and other development projects are fragmenting the river and disrupting its natural rhythms, with severe consequences for those living downstream.

Syria finds itself at a crossroads. Faced with the imminent need to prevent a relapse into renewed short-term insecurity, its government also must start to develop longer-term strategies to support recovery.

Generating peace dividends for Syria’s embattled population requires confronting the ecological threats which currently undermine basic human security across the country. Nowhere do these threats emerge more prominently than in its agricultural sector. Ensuring that this essential sector lives up to its potential as an engine for economic stabilization and peace will require a set of targeted – and climate-sensitive – investments and interventions.  

“History teaches that China and the United States gain from cooperation and lose from confrontation” was part of the congratulatory note from Xi Jinping to President-elect Trump. Xi also stressed both sides should continue to uphold “mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation.” The cooperation between these two superpowers began in 1972 when President Richard Nixon and Premier Zhou Enlai signed the Shanghai Communiqué, years before they established diplomatic relations. 

Indonesia is the world’s largest producer and exporter of palm oil, an ingredient used globally in a huge variety of food and household products from peanut butter to shampoo. Yet it is also an important driver of deforestation and contributor to climate change and biodiversity loss. Over the past 20 years, the expansion of palm oil plantations has contributed one-third of the total loss of old-growth forests in Indonesia (around 3 million hectares).

Somalia is trapped in a cycle where climate impacts—droughts, floods, and erratic weather patterns—fuel displacement, poverty, and conflict. With agriculture and pastoralism at the core of its economy, the country is particularly vulnerable to these environmental shocks, which create fertile ground for insurgent groups to exploit the resulting instability.