Meeting the immense impacts of climate change will require strong “top-down” policies to reduce emissions and remove carbon from the atmosphere, as well as building resilience in the face of climate stresses and shocks. As communities and governments undertake rapid and fundamental transformation of sectors and systems—energy, transportation, buildings and even green spaces—the need for governments to develop strategies that drive innovation and technological solutions becomes more urgent and essential.

The much-needed transition to a zero carbon, green economy offers opportunities to contribute to peace, but only if the conflict risks of transition are understood and managed to produce a just and peaceful transition. That means minimizing “backdraft”—the unintended negative impacts of transition that are a key obstacle to that goal.

Of COVID-19’s many lessons, one is most critical to our collective next steps:

Business as usual in global health is no longer possible.

The pandemic exposed weaknesses in health systems across the world, and particularly in the delivery of equitable, high-quality reproductive, maternal, newborn, adolescent, and child health (RMNCAH) services. It also reinforced that effectively addressing these challenges requires rapid, responsive approaches driven and owned by countries and local institutions.

While the world’s population now approaches 8 billion people, global fertility rates have been declining for decades. The overall drivers of this decline include increased access to contraception and reproductive health care, an increase in women seeking higher education, women’s empowerment in the workforce, lower rates of child mortality globally, increased cost of raising children, and overall greater gender equality.

“Half. This is the proportion of all pregnancies that are unintended. That is 121 million pregnancies every year,” said Sarah Craven, Director of the Washington D.C. Office at UNFPA during a recent U.S. launch event for the 2022 UNFPA State of World Population (SWOP) report. “For these women, the most life altering reproductive choice, whether to become pregnant or not, is no choice at all. This is an unseen crisis unfolding right before our eyes.”

Ever since the CNA’s Military Advisory Board—composed of former U.S. military personnel—named climate change as a “threat multiplier” in a 2007 report, the term has gained widespread currency both in environmental and national security circles. It also has propelled the need to assess and address climate-related security risks higher up overall policy agendas.