In February’s most read post, Isabella Caltabiano reports on how the 2019 Worldwide Threat Assessment includes a wider scope of perceived environmental threats to America’s national security than earlier reports. This year’s report warns of extreme weather events, high temperatures, diminishing Arctic sea ice, among others, and takes a strong stance against the current administration’s views on climate change.  

India’s impending health crisis can be found in its toxic water supply. In January’s most popular post, Jennifer Möller-Gulland, J. Carl Ganter, and Cody T. Pope of Circle of Blue report on India’s widespread use of contaminated wastewater by farmers to raise their crops. Water contamination caused by the discharge of untreated, highly polluted industrial, municipal and agricultural wastewater has spread deeper into the country’s major rivers and food supply causing burning lakes, decreasing agricultural exports, and increasing rates of diseases. With no alternative, India’s farmers pray that wastewater will continue to flow.

The five most read posts from the Wilson Center’s Maternal Health Initiative team illustrate how inextricably linked women’s health is to every other aspect of society. Our most popular posts cover maternal and child mortality, faith based engagement in family planning, maternal health in areas of conflict, family planning and the economy, the impacts of caregiving, and Cancer in India.

In 2018, our readers came to New Security Beat to understand how individuals and communities cope in the face of environmental uncertainty, particularly when the rule of law, natural resource management, and social services are lacking.

China is installing more renewable energy capacity than any other country in the world. At the same time, its energy market is so large that the coal power capacity it is installing is equal to the entire U.S. coal fleet and is supporting high polluting coal projects in developing countries. Evan Barnard reports on this dichotomy in November’s most read post.

Once the same country and demographic twins, Bangladesh and Pakistan have diverged greatly in demographics since Bangladesh’s independence in 1971. Richard Cincotta and Elizabeth Leahy Madsen take a look at how despite the country’s vulnerability to extreme weather, sea-level rise, and Islamic extremism, Bangladesh’s bulge of working-age adults with relatively small proportions of seniors and young children offers potential for sustained development.

Can the ocean and river ecosystems of the world survive the sand dredging needed to supply the cement for global construction? In September’s most popular post, Kimberly Yang explores the impact that widespread sand mining is having on China’s rivers and coastal waters, driven by China’s construction boom. The consequences are significant, but Chinese construction and real-estate companies are exploring ways to lessen the environmental impact of sand dredging.

Are we headed for a global fish war? In our top post for August, Vulcan’s Johan Bergenas argues that “fish may become the newest addition to the list of resources driving geopolitical competition.” In “Like Water and Oil: Fish as a Geostrategic Resource,” he identifies five parallels between oil and fish that point to the need for a more sustainable fishing industry.