The future of global security will depend in large part on the fate of today’s 1.2 billion young people. Do youth between the ages of 15 and 24—a critical phase of life—possess  the necessary social, physical, intellectual, and financial building blocks to underpin productive, healthy adulthoods? Or do they lack this solid base, putting them at risk of personal and social instability?

Following a series of recent devastating extreme weather events – mudslides in Sierra Leone, flooding in south Asia, and severe storms hitting the Philippines and the Gulf of Mexico, many have called attention to the role of climate change in these disasters. The string of Atlantic hurricanes that has devastated the Caribbean has prompted fresh calls to make nations and communities more resilient to the effects of climate change, and especially to address “loss and damage” in island nations.

Every day, millions of people flip switches to turn on the lights or warm up the house, while millions of others light candles or wood-fired stoves. While most people know that the source of the energy we use varies according to where we live, many don’t realize that energy decisions are not gender neutral. Every country’s policy decisions about energy production and use have significant implications for women’s empowerment and the level of equality (or inequality) between women and men.

“A monster”… “wreaking havoc”… “ripped through” the Caribbean and part of Florida: I heard these words as Hurricane Irma, the strongest Category 5 Atlantic hurricane on record, decimated the entire island of Barbuda and destroyed the four “most solid” buildings on St. Martin. And as I write this from the relative safety of Barbados, Hurricane Maria is on a similar path, leaving similar destruction in its wake. With winds of more than 160 miles per hour, Maria was the strongest storm to make landfall in Dominica. In a matter of hours, it devastated the country, regained its strength, and continued its onslaught on Puerto Rico and beyond.

Fear fends off disaster, but does fear give us the tools to manage risk? Do we need to spend precious time learning complex risk management techniques? Perhaps not: learning disaster reduction techniques could be as easy as playing a game.  “Well-designed games, like risk management measures, involve decisions with consequences. While games can never fully capture the complexity of climate risk management decisions, through gameplay these complexities can be revealed, discussed, and processed,” writes Pablo Suarez, the Climate Centre’s associate director for research and innovation.

Floods have taken the lives of more than 100 people in northern Bangladesh over the last two weeks. Fully one third of the country has been flooded and some 600,000 people have been displaced in the riverine nation as a result of monsoons in India and Nepal. At international climate forums, Bangladeshi diplomats consistently decry such disasters as part of their urgent calls for action to mitigate changing weather patterns worldwide. But here in the country’s Rangpur-Kurigam region, both authorities and citizens have been reluctant to attribute these deadly disasters to the effects of climate change.

In Jordan—one of the driest, most water poor countries in the world—population growth is straining the country’s aging infrastructure and limited water resources. As the Jordan country director for the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), I’ve met urban residents and business owners who have only received water from the city utility once every two weeks, relying on storage tanks to fill the gaps. I’ve spoken with water utility managers who could no longer keep up with urgent repairs, leading to bursting water pipes and sewage overflowing into streets. And farmers in the Jordan Valley have told me that each year their wells have grown drier, and they feared the next generation would be forced to give up farming olives, tomatoes, grapes, and strawberries.

In 2015, Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina received the United Nations Champion of the Earth award for her “outstanding leadership on the frontline of climate change.” One of the world’s most populated countries, Bangladesh is also one of the least developed and most vulnerable to climate change. While Bangladesh is well-known for the natural calamities that regularly leave millions of people homeless and displaced, far fewer know that it is also one of the most proactive countries in the fields of disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate adaptation, as well as a leading voice among the poorest countries in climate negotiations.