Mention London, Rome, or New York, and people immediately conjure up Big Ben, the Colosseum, the Statue of Liberty. Beijing, Cairo, Mumbai? Check. They’ve heard of them. Megacities, the ones with lots of history, lots of people, and an oversized impact on the economy and culture, tend to be well-known. 

Fewer people may know much about Addis Ababa, Dhaka, Lagos, or São Paulo — yet many would recognize the names. But who knows or has been to Darkhan, Mongolia or Santa Fe, Argentina or Boké-Kamsar in Guinea?

“The exploitation of the mining and trade of conflict minerals in the eastern DRC [Democratic Republic of the Congo] has contributed to instability, violence, displacement of people, and severe human rights abuses,” says the Government Accountability Office (GAO) in its annual report, Conflict Minerals: Actions Needed to Assess Progress Addressing Armed Groups’ Exploitation of Minerals. The report examines a sample of filings from 1,083 companies that submitted conflict mineral disclosures required by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 2019.

The dry season returned to Brazil’s Amazon region in late July—and with it, forest fires, largely human-made. After making substantial progress in reducing deforestation in the 2000s and early 2010s, Brazil has reversed course and deforestation is rising. In the Amazon, this season has been the worst in more than a decade in number of fires, and second worst in terms of total deforestation, according to satellite data from Brazil’s National Institute of Space Research (INPE), which monitors the situation.

On August 11, 2020, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro dismissed the raging fires in the Amazon, calling their existence a “lie.” However, his own government has reported more than 10,000 fires currently burning in the Amazon, a 17 percent increase from the same time last year, when the number of wildfires reached a nine-year high. The international community has condemned the Brazilian government’s response to the raging Amazon fires. Bolsonaro’s denial about these fires blocks effective domestic, international, government, and non-governmental responses. And it risks exacerbating the conditions contributing to global climate change.

When Farhad Ahma returned to his native country last year on a work trip, his first thought was of his small daughter back home. The air around him was so thick with pollution, he couldn’t imagine she would survive the climate in this region of northeastern Syria. Ahma himself struggled to breathe almost as soon as he arrived, nauseated by the heavy smell within a couple hours. He was born and raised nearby, in a city called Qamishli, but he had lived in Berlin for some time now. Returning was a shock to his system.

Not since COVID-19 burst onto the scene a few months ago have so many individuals and institutions, outside the business, military, and intelligence communities, woken up to the need for a smart way to characterize and communicate uncertainty. The overwhelming choice for many is scenario planning. Today, scenario planning applies to a wide spectrum of issues, not just international development. It has been used to anticipate changes in higher education, rethink workforce composition, and explore options for individual financial planning.  

Its name conjures an image of vivid deep blues. But when cobalt is dug out of the ground in ore form, there’s barely a hint of the rich hue it lends its name to. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which produces more than half of the world’s supply, it takes the form of heterogenite, a dull brownish mineral that could easily be mistaken for small clods of dirt.

But people die for this mineral. Children suffer for it. Livelihoods, educations, neighborhoods, environments and personal safety are sacrificed for it.

“You might know what to do,” said Rachel Kleinfeld, a Senior Fellow for Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “But if you don’t think about how to do it, your reform isn’t going to move forward.” She spoke at a recent Wilson Center virtual event on how to think and work politically while supporting biodiversity conservation goals. It may sound counterintuitive, she said, but undertaking what’s considered the best intervention may not be the best approach.