I pulled my horse to a stop along the banks of a little stream, which was wedged between two grassy hills speckled with wildflowers and pika holes, to admire the view of the Tibetan-Qinghai Plateau’s rolling hills evolving into snowcapped mountains.

As senior military officers, we see water stress—the lack of adequate fresh water—as a growing factor in the world’s hotspots and conflict areas, many of vital interest to the United States. Our earlier reports have identified a nexus among climate, water, energy, and U.S. national security. We have previously shown how emerging resource scarcity across this nexus can be a threat multiplier and an accelerant of instability. With escalating global population and the impact of a changing climate, we see the challenges of water stress rising with time. It is in this context that we now seek to provide a better understanding of the mechanisms through which water factors into violence and conflict.

For the first time, the Joint Doctrine of the Indian Armed Forces acknowledges that the “environment has emerged as a critical area of the security paradigm,” and warns that if environmental degradation and related issues increase security risks, the military will need to respond. Released in 2017, the doctrine lists a series of non-traditional security challenges linked to the environment that could influence conflict and war, including “climate change, ecosystem disruption, energy issues, population issues, food-related problems, economic issues of unsustainable modes of production, and civil strife related to environment.” While the military has taken steps to address its impacts on the environment, it can do much more to support the nation’s environmental goals and mitigate environment-related security risks.

The Trump administration’s first National Defense Strategy, which was released last Friday, outlines the U.S. Department of Defense’s national security goals in a world it describes as rife with great power competition between the United States, Russia, and China. Climate change – which some military leaders warn poses a looming threat to the effectiveness of American military power – was not mentioned, in stark contrast to the previous administration’s strategic priorities. National security and defense strategies issued by the Obama Administration highlighted the dangers climate change poses to national security, including “increased national disasters, refugee flows, and conflicts over basic resources like food and water.”

Climate change is “unfolding as we speak,” said John Agard, professor of Tropical Island Ecology at the University of the West Indies (UWI) at a recent public forum on island nations hosted in Trinidad by UWI’s Institute of International Relations. The “close coupling of terrestrial, coastal, and marine systems” in islands “results in fast-spreading impacts across systems,” said Roger-Mark De Souza¹, formerly the director of population, environmental security, and resilience for the Wilson Center, which partnered with UWI and American University’s Center for Latin American and Latino Studies to organize the event.

“Resilience isn’t an outcome,” said USAID Resilience Coordinator Greg Collins at a recent Wilson Center event on measuring resilience; it is “the ability to manage adversity and change without compromising future well-being.” The wide array of individual factors that contribute to building resilience—ranging from livestock insurance and microsavings, to risk tolerance and women’s decision-making—can be challenging to measure individually, let alone in concert. But this assessment is essential for designing and implementing successful development projects: “We have to be able to answer the question: Is this building resilience, yes or no?” said Cornell University’s Chris Barrett.

In the war-torn Jordan River Valley, we can meet the “strategic objective of reducing conflict by promoting cooperation on shared waters,” said former defense official Sherri Goodman at a recent Wilson Center event on environmental peacebuilding. Even in the midst of political disputes, Jordanians, Israelis, and Palestinians must work together to manage the scarce supplies of clean water to protect their health, their economies, and their security.

“Floods are one of many factors that keep massive amounts of the population in poverty and always on the brink of disaster,” said Eric Viala at the second event in a four-part series on water security organized by the Wilson Center in cooperation with the Sustainable Water Partnership, which Viala directs. Panelists at the event discussed the impact of intense flooding on vulnerable communities and proposed innovative and collaborative approaches to reducing their risks in the face of disasters.