“There’s a lot you can do to mitigate risk once you acknowledge the risk exists,” said John Conger, senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies at a June 5th briefing on Capitol Hill. Convened by the Environmental and Energy Study Institute, Center for Climate and Security,  and the Henry M. Jackson Foundation, the panel of former Department of Defense (DOD) officials and retired military officers included Sherri Goodman, senior fellow at the Wilson Center, and three members of the Military Advisory Board: Brigadier General Gerald Galloway, General Ron Keys, and Rear Admiral Ann C. Phillips.

Scientists agree that many countries in tropical, subtropical, and arid regions should expect changes to water availability and supply from climate change. The U.S. intelligence community has likewise warned of water-driven challenges not only for countries directly affected by water changes, but indirectly to various U.S. national security interests. Perhaps not surprisingly then, the popular literature has been quite clear about prophesizing wars over water.

In 2012, the U.S. National Intelligence Council judged that within the next 10 years, water problems would be a major contributor to instability in “many” countries that are of interest to the United States. South and Southeast Asia, with its many transboundary river basins, large populations, and geopolitical flashpoints, is one among a number of hotspots where such instability could occur.

While governments will play the central role in delivering the Sustainable Development Goals, they can’t do it without the private sector, said experts at the Wilson Center on April 12.

Why is Malawi, one of the poorest countries in the world, so peaceful? According to the country’s first female president, Joyce Banda, women get the credit: “When women are in charge, when women control the land, when the children belong to the women, when domestic violence is minimum, then you find more tranquility and peace,” said Banda, now a Wilson Center Distinguished Fellow, at an April 25th event co-sponsored by the Wilson Center’s Women in Public Service Project and Plan International USA.

In a world rapidly churning out unpredictable political shocks, intelligence analysts occasionally need to clear their heads of the daily barrage of newsworthy events and instead work with simple theories that discern the direction and speed of trends and help predict their outcomes. Political demography, the study of population age structures and their relationships to political trends and events, has helped some analysts predict geopolitical changes in a world that, from time to time, appears utterly chaotic.

Pray for rain. Mega-drought. Winter salmon run nearly extinguished. Sierra snowpack dismal. These were just some of the headlines in California newspapers over the last five years during a historic drought that elevated water security to the top of everyone’s minds.