Climate change is the world’s greatest environmental threat. It is also increasingly understood as a threat to domestic and international peace and security – recognized by the Department of Defense as a “threat multiplier,” by Secretary of State John Kerry as “perhaps the world’s most fearsome weapon of mass destruction,” and by President Obama, in an address to graduates of the United States Military Academy, as “a creeping national security crisis.” The Supreme Court’s temporary blocking of the Clean Power Plan highlights the Federal-State divide over how to address climate change, but because of its national security dimension, climate change also raises unique separation of powers issues between the president and Congress with regard to how the military can respond.

In November 2015, experts from a variety of fields gathered at the Peace Palace in The Hague for the Planetary Security Conference, one of the first large-scale conferences on environmental security and what is hoped to be the start of an annual series. The conference report gives a sense of the diverse discussions held in the Netherlands.

It is “not sufficient to look at history for lessons on how we should prepare for and prevent future security risks in a climate change world,” said Swathi Veeravalli, research scientist at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Geospatial Research Laboratory, at the Wilson Center on January 14. Climate change and the extreme weather events it brings pose an “unprecedented” threat to human security. [Video Below]

Patterns of trade and consumption in the global food system are shifting. In the past, most trade in agricultural commodities occurred between developed and developing countries. But, in recent years, the volume of South-to-South trade has increased significantly. Today, some of the most problematic crops in terms of their effect on the environment, such as soy and palm oil, are predominantly traded amongst developing and fast-rising countries.

Around the world, urbanization and climate change are transforming societies and environments, and the stakes could not be higher for the poor and marginalized. The 2015 UN climate conference in Paris (COP-21) highlighted the need for coordinated action to address the profound injustice of the world’s most disadvantaged people bearing the greatest costs of climate impacts. Among those at the COP were mayors from around the world advocating for the important role of cities in these efforts.

January 7, 2016 could hardly have been worse in this thunderously beautiful, water-parched, and economically reeling nation of 55 million residents at the bottom of Africa.