On 25 January 2019, the UN Security Council held an open debate to discuss the security implications of climate-related disaster events. The meeting, initiated by the Dominican Republic, underscored the global nature of climate-related disasters. Most speakers highlighted the need for better climate risk management as an important contribution to safeguarding international peace and security. The debate marks the beginning of a year in which climate security ranks high on the UN’s agenda.

“For the longest time we thought that water was forever renewable and that it would always be there,” said Gloria Steele, Acting Assistant Administrator for Asia with USAID, at a recent Wilson Center event on water security in High Asia. “We now know that is not the case, and we need to protect it and manage it effectively.”

It is imperative that countries adopt a human security approach to achieve “freedom from hazard impacts”—nationally through a scientific disaster risk reduction strategy and internationally through climate diplomacy.

Once again, we find ourselves witnessing another calamitous hurricane event in the United States, just weeks after a George Washington University report estimated that nearly 3,000 more people died in the 6 months following last year’s Hurricane Maria than would have without the hurricane. We have been here before, too many times. With each and every major disaster, the scientists who study public health in crises ask ourselves, is what we have learned and shared being taken seriously—or is it just being ignored? The response to Hurricane Maria, which devastated Puerto Rico last year, is just one more example where we have to ask if our work is valued by those who have the political power to improve public health. The staggering number of excess deaths—most of whom died after the storm—point to a deadly lack of prevention and preparedness, particularly in the public health system.

The security implications of climate change emerged as an important area of concern in the mid 2000s in both policy circles and academia. Since then, there has been much research exploring causal pathways between climate phenomena and violent conflict, often with inconclusive or mixed results.

 This is what a water panic looks like in a major global city.

People hoard water. They queue for hours, well into the night, to fill jugs at natural springs. Like mad Christmas shoppers, they clear supermarkets of bottled water. They descend on stockers before they can fill the shelves.

Last month, a partially completed dam in Laos’ Attapeu province collapsed, washing away people and villages in its path. Hundreds of people are still missing and more than six thousand are homeless. And after last summer’s hurricanes, U.S. citizens in Houston and Puerto Rico escaped death but were forced to evacuate when dams were flooded. Dam failure can be catastrophic for people, property, and power—and the risks are rising, due to lack of investment in maintenance, growing vulnerability to climate change, and the demonstrated potential of cyberattacks.

As the Atlantic hurricane season kicks off this month, some coastal communities in the United States and small-island nations in the Caribbean are still recovering from last year’s record-breaking damage. At the same time, the heavy rains pounding the East Coast this week are part of a long-term trend towards more severe heavy rainfall events that have led to deadly floods and threaten critical U.S. military bases. Even on sunny days, cities such as Norfolk and Manila contend with high tide or “nuisance” flooding—a phenomenon that has increased as much as nine-fold since the 1960s, according to NOAA.