The numbers are staggering. A third of the food produced in the world is lost or wasted—from farms and food processing factories to grocery stores, restaurants, and homes. This growing mountain of rotting food is a major methane emitter, accounting for 8 to 10 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. If food waste were a country, it would be the third largest greenhouse gas emitter, with the United States and China as leading food wasters. 

A window what we’re reading at the Stimson Center’s Environmental Security Program

Community Patrols Offer a Blueprint to Enforcement of Conservation Law (Mongabay)

In the remote reaches of the Brazilian Amazon, an experiment in grassroots enforcement is yielding results. The Voluntary Environmental Agents Program, which trains and funds residents to patrol their own territories, has reduced illegal fishing, hunting, and logging by 80%. Operating in the Mamirauá and Amanã reserves, the program equips communities with surveillance tools, environmental education, and leadership training, weaving traditional knowledge into conservation efforts.

In an era of apparent decline in international cooperation and rising crises, freshwater offers an area in which joint approaches remain absolutely essential—especially since water often transcends the boundaries of nation-states. 

Cooperation has long been the preferred approach in dealing with water resources shared with neighboring countries. Since the first—and so far, only—water war in 2550 B.C.E., states have favored cooperative action over conflict to manage, protect, or develop our planet’s 313 transboundary surface water basins and 468 transboundary aquifers.

Syria finds itself at a crossroads. Faced with the imminent need to prevent a relapse into renewed short-term insecurity, its government also must start to develop longer-term strategies to support recovery.

Generating peace dividends for Syria’s embattled population requires confronting the ecological threats which currently undermine basic human security across the country. Nowhere do these threats emerge more prominently than in its agricultural sector. Ensuring that this essential sector lives up to its potential as an engine for economic stabilization and peace will require a set of targeted – and climate-sensitive – investments and interventions.  

A window into what we’re reading at the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program

EU Parliament Suspends Rwandan Critical Mineral Pact Over Links to DRC Conflict (Mongabay)

Rwanda and the DRC both have large reserves of critical minerals essential to the clean energy transition. Yet the EU has voted to suspend a cooperation agreement on mineral extraction in the region after the Rwandan-backed rebel group M23 seized key areas in the DRC’s eastern provinces.

Close your eyes for a moment. Now imagine stepping back in time to an era when women in Western countries had no rights, no security, and no voice.

Now open your eyes again. In our own moment, millions of Afghan women—and in particular widows—live in just such a moment. This reality has never changed for them, and, in fact it has only worsened. Afghanistan remains one of the most repressive places in the world to be a woman: education is banned, employment is restricted, and even traveling alone is forbidden.

A window into what we’re reading at the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program

Declining Biodiversity May Increase Risk of Future Pandemics (Mongabay)

The COVID-19 pandemic that spread around the world in 2020 brought normal life to a standstill at many times in the past few years. But far from being a singular event, scientists and health experts warn that pandemics may become more common as biodiversity declines and spillover events become more likely.

A window into what we’re reading at the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program

Declining Fish Stocks Threaten Lake Tanganyika Fishing Communities (Al Jazeera) 

For the millions who live on the shores of Lake Tanganyika, fishing is a way of life that has sustained generations. However, recent declines in fish production in the world’s largest freshwater lake have devastated Tanzania’s fishermen and prompted questions of the sustainability of the decades-long practice.