The travails of the last year, when a bat virus infected humans and turned the world upside down, were an unfortunate reminder of the inseparable ties between society and the natural environment.

So it is with water, which will again this year direct the course of history, through events small and large.

What are the large events to pay attention to? What are the trends and flashpoints?

Early predictions about COVID-19’s impacts on Africa suggested that the continent would be a disaster zone marked by weak medical systems collapsing under strain and undemocratic states failing to provide social services to destitute populations. These predictions did not come to pass. Instead, many countries across the continent stepped up early on to join the world in curtailing the spread of COVID-19. The second order effects of the virus have been significant, however. Despite the low numbers of infections and deaths, lockdowns and the decline of a large percentage of informal trade and commerce in Sub-Saharan Africa have sent the region’s economy into recession, with increased inflation rates, widespread unemployment, and increased food insecurity. It’s within this context that collaboration (internationally and within the continent, between governments, the private sector, and local communities) to protect the environment—and by extension enhance livelihoods, promote sustainable development, and achieve enduring peace—has taken new forms.

The ongoing farmers’ movement in India has taken the world’s largest democracy by storm. Hundreds of thousands from all over the country have laid siege to New Delhi for more than two months. As both the protestors and the government dig their heels in, the chances of confrontation and violence are increasing by the day.

A new Global Fragility Strategy, released late last year by the U.S. Department of State, signals a growing awareness of the role that environmental issues play in fragility, conflict, and peace. According to the State Department’s Office of Foreign Assistance, in the last five years alone, “the U.S. government has spent $30 billion in 15 of the most fragile countries in the world.” These “large-scale U.S. stabilization efforts after 9/11 have cost billions of dollars but failed to produce intended results,” writes Devex’s Teresa Welsh. As a result, Congress passed into law in 2019 the Global Fragility Act, legislation that directed the Department of State to lead the development of a new 10-year Global Fragility Strategy that sets out a new U.S approach to conflict prevention and stabilization in fragile contexts.

For years, analysts have disputed the extent of climate change’s role in conflict. But the nature of climate risks can stifle those looking to define them.

The Syrian civil war has raged for almost a decade now, and in the climate security community it can feel as if we’ve spent at least that long arguing about its causes. For every claim about the impact of extreme drought in the lead up to 2011, there’s been blowback, with some scholars arguing that the climate angle has been exaggerated at the expense of other causes of the conflict. And for every argument about rural-to-urban migration, there have been suggestions that its impact in precipitating protests has been overstated. Amid some overly forceful media assertion about the significance of climate change—and valid fears that invoking the environment might be seen as absolving guilty parties, despite efforts to highlight the regime’s ultimate culpability—climate security analysts have struggled to fully pinpoint climate’s precise contribution to the conflict. Cue uncertainty, controversy, and sometimes fierce academic polemics.

“It is in Brazil’s interest to climate-proof the nation,” said Wilson Center Senior Fellow Sherri Goodman during a recent International Military Council on Climate and Security (IMCCS) event. Referencing a new IMCCS  report, Climate and Security in Brazil, Goodman, who is also Secretary General for the IMCCS, said that Brazilian leaders ought to develop counter-deforestation and climate plans as critical elements of the national security agenda.

“If solar radiation management were done well—that is, the science is right, the engineering is right, and the policy and governance frameworks around all of the stuff work—then solar radiation management could be a really important, positive contribution to humanity’s responding to climate change,” says Simon Nicholson, associate professor at American University’s School of International Service and co-founder of the Forum for Climate Engineering Assessment in this week’s Friday Podcast interview with ECSP senior advisor and Ohio University professor, Geoff Dabelko. “But, there are all kinds of risks associated with this endeavor.”