Fires are proliferating. By the end of September, over 4,500 active fires had been detected in Syria during 2019. From May through June, 2,106 of these fires burned in northeastern Syria—Raqqa, Deir ez-Zour, and Al-Hasakeh – as documented by the nongovernmental organization, REACH. Meanwhile, widespread fires in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest caused global alarm. World leaders are becoming increasingly concerned about the environmental threats posed by increased fires, but Syria’s fires may also be linked to security threats.

Universal health coverage, a sustainable development goal championed by Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), won a key vote of confidence during this year’s United Nations General Assembly in New York City. The member states endorsed primary health care as a means to reach more than 4 billion people who lack essential care—a critical gap to the achievement of universal health coverage by 2030.

Houston after another major flood a few weeks ago; the Bahamas after Dorian; Paradise, California, after the Camp Fire; Haiti after a major 2010 earthquake; Puerto Rico after Maria; New Jersey and New York after Sandy; New Orleans after Katrina; Thailand and Indonesia after the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004… The list goes on. As we head into another hurricane season, we should once again examine what we’ve learned and prepare to reduce the impact of disasters on communities worldwide.

Water is so scarce these days in Murrurundi, a drought-tested town in the northern reaches of New South Wales, that it arrives by truck.

Murrurundi Dam, an off-channel reservoir that draws from the Pages River, is functionally dry. An emergency well provides a little local water, but half of the small community’s supply is now trucked in.

“I’ve never seen the Pages River this low,” Daele Healy, who has lived in town for 15 years, told Circle of Blue. “There’s just no water visible at all. Not even little ponds.”

Considering how vulnerable Pacific Island countries (PIC) are to the conflict-prone effects of climate change, it is surprising that so little attention has been focused on the region. To address the conflict potential of the effects of climate change, as well as of adaptation and mitigation policies and technologies, policymakers must draw upon research related to the climate change-conflict nexus that thus far have been widely ignored or underestimated. These include cultural and spiritual aspects, indigenous knowledge, and indigenous ways of adapting to climate change. To fill gaps in knowledge, more granular ethnographic research should explore the complexity of local contexts in Oceania. Non-Western, non-anthropocentric concepts warrant particular attention. 

Rising concentrations of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are reshaping the world from the top down, according to a special report on the world’s oceans and frozen regions from the United Nations climate panel.

Many of climate change’s demographic impacts—including those on migration, health, and mortality—are well known. But will climate change also affect population growth? So far, relatively little is known about whether and how the reproductive goals and behaviors of women and their partners may be influenced by a changing climate. However, a number of recent empirical studies offer evidence of such effects, underscoring the multidimensional ways that households modify their structure and activities in response to changing environmental conditions. The effects also highlight the complex and interactive linkages between population growth rates and climate change.

September 12, 2019 marks one year since South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir and former Vice President-turned-opposition leader Riek Machar signed a new peace agreement. The human and environmental cost of the five-year war it ended has been staggering. Women and girls have often borne the brunt of the violence. Fighting and displacement have also placed tremendous pressure on the country’s abundant wildlife and natural resources. Militarized cattle raiding and competition over access to traditional grazing lands threaten the country’s tenuous stability. Gender-sensitive environmental peacebuilding promises to be one of the strategies needed to resolve these multiple challenges.