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.

“Climate engineering can be a way to build a better world,” said Katharine Mach, a senior research scientist at Stanford University during a recent virtual workshop on the promises and pitfalls of climate engineering held by the Institute on Science for Global Policy, in partnership with the Forum for Climate Geoengineering Assessment at American University, and the School of Sustainability at Arizona State University.

Without warning, water rushed into a woman’s home on a raised platform above the floodplain of Bangladesh’s Teesta River. She was just a hand’s distance from her infant son, but she couldn’t stop him from falling into the floodwaters. “She can’t recover back from the trauma,” said the University of Dundee’s Nandan Mukerjee of the mother who lost her child to the currents of climate change.

Russia is “playing politics with energy supplies,” said U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson at a major policy speech at the Wilson Center this week. He accused Russia of wielding natural gas “as a political weapon” and said that ensuring European energy security was “fundamental” to U.S. national security objectives. In Europe, the debate is raging over how best to achieve energy security in the face of the twin challenges of Russian dominance and the need to decarbonize the economy. The ongoing securitization of Russian natural gas could not only complicate the road to a low carbon future in Europe, it could also undermine a European integration project that has mostly been a success.

“Water may be the most important issue we face for the next generation,” writes President Donald J. Trump on the first page of the first-ever U.S. Global Water Strategy. Prepared by the U.S. State Department and released in mid-November, the landmark report was required by Congress’ bipartisan Senator Paul Simon Water for the World Act of 2014. During the public comments phase, the New Security Beat published recommendations from its fellows and experts. Now that it is out, we’ve asked them to share their thoughts on the final report.