At the close of a meeting of G7 foreign ministers in Lübeck today, ministers announced a stronger collective commitment to tackling climate-related risks in states experiencing situations of fragility.

There is a growing chorus of voices claiming climate change will foster more conflict and violence. Books have been released on the impending age of climate wars, while media outlets dutifully report on research that purports to show how global warming will increase violence of every form, from the number of times pitchers bean batters in baseball to the rate of sexual assault.

In 1941, glacial Lake Palcacocha in the Peruvian Andes burst its moraine dam of earth and stones, sending a torrent of water through the city of Huaraz and killing an estimated 5,000 people. Between 1941 and 1950, two more glacial lake outburst floods, or GLOFs, which can occur after enough water fills in behind a glacier’s end moraine, killed another 5,000 people in the Cordillera Blanca. In response, the government set up one of the most effective glaciological units in the world with the goal of preventing future outburst floods. Using drain pipes, reinforced terminal moraine dams, sophisticated tunnels, and valve systems, they drained or contained 34 lakes in the region. As a result, thousands of lives were saved.

While Chinese officials make full frontal regulatory attacks on smog, untreated sludge, an often toxic byproduct from sewage treatment, continues to quietly spread into groundwater and contaminate soil and food.

“Alphonse, however, had not come to talk. Without saying a word, he raised a machete and brought it down onto his uncle’s skull.”

Expectations for the upcoming UN climate change summit in Paris are higher than they’ve been in years. Experts expect it will be the best chance to achieve a binding, universal agreement to limit carbon emissions. But the conference is still not getting the attention it deserves from policymakers and the public, given the stakes – and not just for the environment but for the international system writ large, said Nick Mabey, founding director and chief executive of the UK-based environmental NGO E3G at the Wilson Center on February 12.