The infrastructure powering artificial intelligence (AI) has become both a political flashpoint and a signal for strategic warfare with significant military, geopolitical, and international security implications. Climate change is a “threat multiplier” that exacerbates fragility. The collision of these two forces is certain to create immediate and long-term impacts. AI’s environmental footprint risks externalizing environmental costs onto poorer countries– and the communities within them–that supply critical minerals, water resources, and host energy-intensive infrastructure, deepening ecological, economic, and social inequalities. Over the long run, it may also undermine long-term climate resilience and global stability  

Devastating floods in Mokwa, a rural town in Niger State, claimed lives and destroyed homes and livelihoods in May 2025, and displaced many other residents as well. Yet, in Nigeria today, such flooding has become a predictable seasonal emergency. The real questions each year are not whether such floods will occur, but where they will happen—and if public institutions will act in time to prevent the next deluge from becoming yet another tragedy.

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

Experts Sound Alarm Over Peru-Brazil Biooceanic Railway Risks (Mongabay) 

A proposed railway linking Peru’s Pacific coast to Brazil’s Atlantic is drawing alarm from conservation experts and Indigenous rights advocates. Brazil and China signed a feasibility study agreement for new route crossing both the Andes and the Amazon rainforest in July 2025, with China playing a central role in financing and development. Two alternatives are under consideration, with one running through Peru’s Ucayali region and the other through Madre de Dios, but neither has been approved. A single line could impact 15 protected natural areas, threatening over 1,800 campesino communities, as well as territories inhabited by Indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation. 

In the summer of 2025, Tehran almost reached “Day Zero” – a designation for the moment when the city’s municipal water supply was no longer able to meet basic demand through normal distribution systems. Indeed, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has repeatedly warned that the capital may need to be relocated due to the worsening water crisis.

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

As Gulf Conflict Widens, So Does Its Environmental Footprint  (Dialogue Earth)

The Conflict and Environment Observatory identified at least 120 incidents of environmental harm across 11 countries since the start of U.S. and Israelis began attacks on Iran, as both sides have made oil infrastructure, military facilities, and strategic sites primary targets. The burgeoning conflict poses nuclear, chemical, and long-term carbon risks, as strikes on refineries, tankers, and storage sites degrade air quality, contaminate water contamination, and harm marine ecosystems. And other serious catastrophes loom as the war develops. The IAEA warns that any radioactive release from strikes that target nuclear sites could require evacuating areas the size of major cities.

Recent attacks on critical infrastructure in Iran and the Persian Gulf mark a troubling escalation in the widening regional conflict. Since the U.S. and Israel launched a bombing campaign against Iran on February 28, Iran has responded with waves of missiles and drones targeting Gulf states across the region. Last weekend, both sides crossed a new threshold by striking civilian water and energy infrastructure. U.S. strikes allegedly hit a desalination plan on Iran’s Qeshm Island; Iran retaliated with a drone strike on a desalination plant in Bahrain; and Israeli airstrikes on fuel depots sent toxic smoke across Tehran.

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

Reconciling Mineral Demand in Greenland with Arctic Realities (Yale e360)

President Donals Trump’s recent push to access Greenland’s critical minerals faces severe logistical and environmental challenges. While the island possesses 25 of the 60 minerals in high demand in Washington, Greenland has fewer than 100 miles of roads, a tiny labor force, 16 small ports, and inconsistent electricity. Its unique geography and harsh conditions—including minus 40°F temperatures, high winds that ground helicopters, and pack ice which hinders ships—will require potentially costly new extraction technologies. (Indeed, present conditions already make extraction five to ten times more expensive than in temperate regions.

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

High Seas Treaty Takes Effect as Global Ocean Protection Framework (Associated Press)

The High Seas Treaty is the world’s first legally binding agreement to protect marine life in international waters, and its broad impacts began when it entered into force on January 17, 2026. The treaty governs the nearly half the planet’s surface comprised of vast ocean areas beyond any individual country’s exclusive economic zone—an area which faces threats from destructive fishing, shipping, plastic pollution, overfishing, and potential deep sea mining.