With air pollution causing more than one million deaths in 2015 and reducing the lifespan of citizens in northern China by three years, clean energy has become a top priority for China’s leaders. China tops the world in wind and solar power installations and the government plans to invest more than $360 billion through 2020 on renewable energy. But the green energy transition needs more than renewable power generation: Long-distance electricity transmission could play a key role in cleaning up China’s brown skies. Our recent study estimated that transmitting a hybrid of renewable and coal power through 12 new high-voltage transmission lines could prevent 16,000 deaths from air pollution exposure, and avoid 340 million tons of CO₂ emissions in China.

A threat looms on the sun-splashed horizon of the Republic of the Marshall Islands. The specter of climate change wraps its fingers around the islands, raising sea levels, salinizing soils, and sapping freshwater resources. These changes will make it even harder to sustain crops, which could push the population to even greater reliance on  processed foods, which has already spurred a diabetes epidemic on the islands. The major role played by the United States in the history of the Marshalls, where nuclear bombs were famously tested during the Cold War, may continue, as the impacts of another existential threat—climate change—continue to increase.

It is encouraging to see that the United Nations Security Council is beginning to acknowledge the transboundary dimensions of fragility and conflict, as demonstrated by its newly launched Report of the Secretary-General on the situation in the Lake Chad Basin region. The report, which was presented in the Security Council on 13 September 2017, emphasizes the need for regional responses and the enhanced cooperation of different UN and humanitarian agencies as important steps to addressing the unfolding humanitarian crisis. However, while regional responses to address the regional security challenge are desirable, the report would have been stronger if it had highlighted the underlying environmental contributions of the region’s fragility. 

“The sooner you save, the better off you’ll be in life, wherever you live, at whatever age you start,” said Sophie Romana, director of community finance at Oxfam America: “Saving is the key.” Microsavings groups—informal community-based financial pools–can help vulnerable communities build resilience, said representatives from support organizations CARE International, Oxfam America, and the Grameen Foundation  at a Wilson Center event on June 29, 2017.

While governments will play the central role in delivering the Sustainable Development Goals, they can’t do it without the private sector, said experts at the Wilson Center on April 12.

The present understanding of the relationship between environmental conservation and social justice, two of the greatest challenges of our times, is fraught with multiple confusions, especially in the context of developing countries.