“Spoiler alert: COVID made it even worse,” said Natascha Braumann, Director of Global Government and Public Affairs for Fertility at EMD Serono, of declining fertility trends across the globe. Braumann spoke at a recent Wilson Center event highlighting pre-pandemic fertility, demographic trends, and the impact of COVID-19. The panel was co-sponsored by EMD Serono, the healthcare business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany.

“From birth, from almost from cradle to grave, girls have been seen as some sort of baggage,” said Shamsa Suleiman, Project Management Specialist for Gender and Youth at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Tanzania. Suleiman spoke at a recent Wilson Center event with USAID MOMENTUM Country and Global Leadership about balancing power dynamics to achieve equity for all women and children in maternal, child, and adolescent health, and family planning. Home should be a safe space, said Suleiman. But for many girls, it no longer is. To escape the poverty and pressures at home, including early marriage and other forms of gender-based violence, some girls leave, said Suleiman. “Girls are trying to escape the safe spaces.”

Coordinating international financing for climate adaptation and mitigation remains a persistent challenge. In its 2020 Adaptation Gap Report, the United Nations Environment Programme observes that the annual cost of climate adaptation in developing countries could rise from $70 billion today to $280-500 billion by 2050—and current funding levels are growing at too modest a pace to keep up.

As climate change impacts become starker, interest in geoengineering is growing. Geoengineering is “climate manipulation technologies that we can use to alter the climate to offset the worst parts of climate change,” says Beth Chalecki, Associate Professor of International Relations at the University of Nebraska Omaha, and Research Fellow at the Wilson Center, in a recent episode of Wilson NOW. “It sounds like a technological fix, but of course it’s not that simple,” says Chalecki.

“Reporting on the progress made, the challenges that remain, and impact of COVID-19 on the WASH sector is crucial,” said Ambassador Mark Green, President, Director, and CEO of the Wilson Center and former USAID Administrator, during his opening remarks at a recent event hosted by the Wilson Center and Circle of Blue to discuss the WASH Within Reach project. 

“As we’re talking, the bodily autonomy of millions of women and girls around the world is still denied,” said Klaus Simoni Pedersen, Acting Director of the Division of Communications and Strategic Partnerships for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) at the recent U.S. launch event of the 2021 UNFPA State of the World Population report, hosted by the Wilson Center and UNFPA. The report, My Body is My Own: Claiming the Right to Autonomy and Self-Determination, examines the global status of women and girls as reflected in their agency and decision-making power.

“Addressing the link between climate, conflict, and environment is a critical piece of the new USG framework for addressing fragility, and, as the Biden administration scales up its efforts to center climate change in its foreign policy and national security agendas, it’s going to be essential to consider the linkages between climate action and opportunities to build peace,” said Joe Hewitt, Vice President at the U.S. Institute of Peace during a recent event co-hosted by the Wilson Center and the U.S. Institute of Peace on the importance of integrating climate change responses, conflict prevention efforts, and peacebuilding.

“The impacts of displacement present major challenges at every level of decision-making, but the opportunities for interventions that build resilience to climate change, foster social cohesion, and address gender and other disparities—well they’re also very real as well,” said Ambassador Mark Green, President, Director, and CEO of the Wilson Center, during his opening remarks at a recent event hosted by the Wilson Center and Population Institute to explore innovative approaches to addressing the underlying drivers of forced displacement in the Sahel.