A special type of tree could facilitate peacebuilding in the Sahel. A stretch of semi-arid land south of the Sahara that runs from the Red Sea to the Atlantic Ocean through 10 countries (Eritrea, Sudan, Chad, Niger, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Mali, Algeria, Mauritania, and Senegal). But the western subregion covering the Lake Chad area (the intersection of Chad, Cameroon, Nigeria, and Niger) and Liptako-Gourma (the tri-border zone of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger) in the Sahel has been the scene of a growing humanitarian crisis. Armed groups are terrorizing local populations. Rampant insecurity has forced 1 million people to flee their homes. People have been cut off from their livelihoods. Food insecurity is worsening. Casualties continue to mount. And climate change will likely exacerbate conditions, forcing more people to compete for depleted forest resources and land. More food shortages and instability will surely follow.

Potential water wars due to plans for multiple dams, violent opium cartels supporting world heroin markets, and many conflict-financing minerals including everyday talc used for baby powder. These are the types of natural resources stories that usually make front page news about Afghanistan. But natural resources have a significant role to play in stabilizing Afghanistan. Instead of being a source of conflict, they may help with peacebuilding by creating livelihoods and creating opportunities for ex-combatants.

On a rainy July afternoon in 2017, I was in Jinhua, China, a city just south of Shanghai, to visit a pig farm. This was not just any pig farm—the Mebolo farm grows pigs that become the prized Jinhua Hams, a Chinese delicacy for nearly 1500 years. Long before Italians produced prosciutto and the Spanish their Jamón serrano ham, Marco Polo discovered Jinhua ham in the 13^th century and brought ham-making techniques back to Europe.

In a giant building filled with dark and humid rooms, some 2 billion cockroaches are scampering around piles of food. This is not a scene out of a horror film, but an innovative business venture to help Jinan, a “small” city of 9 million in northeast China, deal with its overfull food waste. Jinan produces more than 6,000 tons of solid waste each day, and like most Chinese cities, 50 to 70 percent of it is food waste. To divert more organic waste from landfills, the municipal government partnered with the Zhangqiu District Food Waste Processing Center to use cockroaches to dispose of the 60 tons of food waste daily from district restaurants and companies as well as households in 40 waste-sorting pilot villages. The company is highly profitable as it gets the food waste for free from the city; and city then gives subsidies for each ton of food waste processed. The company also sells some 2,433 tons of dead cockroaches each year as animal feed additives. However, the small six-legged workers only devour some 100 tons of food waste per day even with expansion plans for two new factories, a mere 1.6 percent of the city’s total  waste. Cockroaches alone cannot conquer the city’s food waste challenge.

“Food production is the largest consumer of water and also represents the largest unknown factor of future water use as the world’s population continues to balloon, and we face increasing weather-related shocks and stresses,” said Laura Schulz, Acting Deputy Assistant Administrator in USAID’s Bureau for Economic Growth, Education and Environment. She spoke at “Feeding a Thirsty World: Harnessing the Connections Between Food and Water Security,” an event sponsored by the Wilson Center, Winrock International, the Sustainable Water Partnership, and USAID. Currently about 70 percent of global water goes to agriculture, a number that is projected to rise “as high as 92 percent,” said Rodney Ferguson, the President and CEO of Winrock International. 

As an agricultural engineering professor, I was excited to visit and tour the farm village Houbali, in southwestern Shandong Province. I found myself standing among newly constructed high-rise buildings, a vastly different community than I had expected to encounter. A bicycle repair shop was setting up alongside other bustling businesses in the first-floor storefronts. Farm families occupied apartments in the upper floors and a beautifully landscaped park and playground were a short walk away. This neighborhood looked like a transplant from Beijing, but these modern buildings were a newly developed farm village surrounded by agricultural fields. The new buildings brought together the residents of four old, nearly empty or “hollow” villages.

“We are suggesting the tilt to resilience [in Nigeria] is not fully evident,” said Julie Howard, Senior Advisor with the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ (CSIS) Global Food Security Project. She spoke at a recent CSIS event launching a new report, Risk and Resilience: Advancing Food and Nutrition Security in Nigeria through Feed the Future. The report critiques the USAID global food security and hunger program, Feed the Future, which is attempting to expand on its work reducing poverty and malnutrition by adding a third priority: building resilience in the second phase of its campaign.