The numbers are staggering. A third of the food produced in the world is lost or wasted—from farms and food processing factories to grocery stores, restaurants, and homes. This growing mountain of rotting food is a major methane emitter, accounting for 8 to 10 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. If food waste were a country, it would be the third largest greenhouse gas emitter, with the United States and China as leading food wasters. 

A window what we’re reading at the Stimson Center’s Environmental Security Program

Community Patrols Offer a Blueprint to Enforcement of Conservation Law (Mongabay)

In the remote reaches of the Brazilian Amazon, an experiment in grassroots enforcement is yielding results. The Voluntary Environmental Agents Program, which trains and funds residents to patrol their own territories, has reduced illegal fishing, hunting, and logging by 80%. Operating in the Mamirauá and Amanã reserves, the program equips communities with surveillance tools, environmental education, and leadership training, weaving traditional knowledge into conservation efforts.

Pakistan’s summer sun is relentless, but its golden rays may hold a promising clean energy solution. 

During my visit to that country last summer, an energy sector expert I met expressed amazement that Pakistan had imported 13 gigawatts of solar modules from China in the first six months of 2024. Media reports celebrated how even remote villages were adopting rooftop solar systems. International observers lauded Pakistan’s “stunning solar boom.”

The Mekong River’s seasonal floods nurture the world’s most productive inland fishery and irrigate rice paddies that feed millions. Approximately 70 million people live in the lower Mekong Basin, and 75% of them depend on fishing and farming for their livelihoods. But hydropower expansion and other development projects are fragmenting the river and disrupting its natural rhythms, with severe consequences for those living downstream.

A window what we’re reading at the Stimson Center’s Environmental Security Program

The World’s Children Face the Most Severe Impacts from Wildfire Smoke (Mongabay)

Evidence of the alarming impacts of wildfire smoke on child health is growing. Children’s developing lungs, faster breathing rates, and greater outdoor exposure make them uniquely vulnerable, and the threat is intensifying as wildfires grow more extreme, incinerating not just forests but urban areas, releasing toxic heavy metals and chemicals. 

For decades, China has been the dominant force in hydropower development across the Mekong subregion, financing, and constructing massive dam projects that have transformed Southeast Asia’s economic and environmental landscape. Many analysts have framed this expansion as a meticulously orchestrated strategy to extend Beijing’s economic and geopolitical influence. But this narrative obscures a more complex reality—one in which China’s dam-building in the Mekong has been shaped by trial and error, reactive policy shifts driven by external shocks, local resistance, and intensifying geopolitical competition.

A window into what we’re reading at the Stimson Center’s Environmental Security Program

Heat-Related Deaths May Have Tripled during Europe’s Heat Wave (Washington Post) 

A record-breaking heat wave in late June and early July pushed temperatures well above 100°F across Europe. Analysis from Imperial College London and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine found that of the 2,300 heat-related deaths in 12 major European cities between June 23 and July 2, 1,500 would not have occurred without the additional 1.3°C of warming caused by climate change.  

In a rural, hard-to-reach area of Blantyre district in southern Malawi, Ephraim Louis cannot imagine where his life would be without the solar panel on the roof of his house. “I am not a captive of darkness anymore,” says Louis, 42. “It’s been more than 10 years since I installed this [solar panel] system. We still don’t have the main grid anywhere near us and no one here thinks it will ever come.”