Given that Pakistan is one of the most climate-vulnerable countries in the world, Washington shouldn’t write it out of the climate change cooperation script

The White House has announced the names of 40 world leaders invited by US President Joe Biden to participate in a virtual global climate summit on April 22-23. Many Pakistanis are unhappy – and with good reason – that Prime Minister Imran Khan isn’t on the list. 

New planet-changing geoengineering technology is available to help humanity combat an existential security threat. However, like atomic fission, this technology is not to be jumped at without caution.

This year is the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Baruch Plan. Almost no one knows this, or if they do, they probably don’t remember who Bernard Baruch was, or what his eponymous plan was for. But the Baruch Plan of 1946 was our first and last real attempt at world governance of nuclear weapons. Three-quarters of a century later, the ill-fated effort carries important lessons for addressing the crisis of climate change.

“With climate change, we can make no small plans—we need to go big,” said Lieutenant General Wallace Gregson (ret.), former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asian and Pacific Security Affairs, during a recent event co-hosted by the Environmental Peacebuilding Association and Wilson Center on opportunities and challenges facing the new administration relating to the environment, peace, and conflict.

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?

As the warm relationship between U.S. President Donald Trump and Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro comes to an end with the former’s electoral defeat in November 2020, the next two years (Bolsonaro is up for reelection in 2022) could prove to be strenuous for the bilateral relations of the two largest economies in the Western Hemisphere. President-elect Biden has signaled that combatting climate change will be a priority in his administration. Now, without the cover of a U.S. administration that denies climate change, Brazil could become further isolated in international environmental politics. All of this complicates the political realities for President Bolsonaro, whose political survival depends on maintaining his coalition of fanatical supporters, the agricultural sector, and former and current members of the military. Still, given U.S. concerns about Chinese influence in the region, the Biden-Bolsonaro relationship could prove to be low-key and practical.

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.

“Climate change will upend the 21^st century world order. From financial systems, migration patterns, and great power competition, to the potential unintended consequences of climate responses, and issues of inequity and the future of democracy, climate change will penetrate our systems, our relationships, and our lives in ways that we have yet to fully understand,” said Lauren Risi, Director of the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program, at a recent event co-hosted by the Wilson Center and adelphi. The panel discussion focused on two topics addressed in the recently launched 21^st Century Diplomacy project—how efforts to address climate change will engage new modes of multilateralism and how to incorporate the increasingly urgent calls for a more equitable and just world.