“Climate work is practical, common-sense, good development,” said Carrie Thompson, deputy assistant administrator at the Bureau for Economic Growth, Education, and Environment at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). “It’s prevention, and we all know that preventative medicine is the best medicine.”

A roughly three-foot increase in sea level will threaten 128 coastal military installations in the United States, valued at $100 billion, according to a study from the Union of Concerned Scientists. The report, The U.S. Military on the Front Lines of Rising Seas, argues that the growing exposure to storm surge and sea-level rise puts vital infrastructure, training and testing grounds, and housing for thousands of personnel at risk.

As global climate change affects livelihoods across the world, migration patterns are also changing. In a recent study published in Global Environmental Change, Clark Gray, Valerie Mueller, and I found that since the 1970s, climatic variations have been increasing internal migration across many South American countries, with few exceptions. And many people are headed to cities.

At this year’s International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) World Conservation Congress, more than 10,000 scientists, activists, and leaders from around the world committed to finding “nature-based solutions” to reversing environmental declines and securing a healthy, livable planet.

Eddah Senetoi lives with her son in the small pastoralist community of Elangata Waus. They keep cows, goats, sheep, and donkeys to buy food and pay school fees. For her and other pastoralists living in southern Kenya’s Kajiado County, climate change is compounding challenges from land subdivision and privatization, and magnifying social tensions and community conflicts over access to resources.

Last month, headlines around the world heralded a breakthrough for international environmental cooperation. During ongoing ozone treaty negotiations in Rwanda, China broke with the developing world, agreeing with the United States to aggressively phase out hydrofluorocarbons, a significant global warming pollutant found in refrigerators and air conditioners. These changes are expected to make a big difference in combating climate change, mitigating half a Celsius degree of warming.

Climate change isn’t a political issue in many countries, but it is in the United States. If that trend continues much longer, American service members may find themselves at “the intersection of politics and events” as they confront the consequences of climate change head on in the form of increased instability and humanitarian disasters, says Edward J. Erickson in a special issue of the U.S. Marine Corps Press Journal.