In September, Ambassador David Balton, a Senior Fellow at the Wilson Center’s Polar Initiative, testified before the Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries, and Coast Guard, testifying against illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing (IUU fishing). “We don’t even know just how much illegal fishing is going on,” said Ambassador David Balton, a Senior Fellow at the Wilson Center’s Polar Institute, in a recent Wilson Center NOW interview. IUU fishing is a major threat to the global fisheries industry as well as the oceans. “Even when nations get together and establish rules for fisheries or stocks across jurisdictional lines, it’s difficult to enforce the rules against everyone, and there is unfortunately a high percentage of illegal fishing that takes place.”

Huo Chang grows visibly exasperated as he speaks about his city’s water crisis. From his office in Beijing’s largest state-owned environmental investment and service company, China Energy Conservation and Environmental Protection Group (CECEP), the water expert explains how Beijing is in the throes of a population and economic boom that has left its water resources both polluted and depleted. In response to these opposing pressures, the city turned to controversial measures to avoid a Cape Town-like Day Zero crisis in which Beijing would no longer be able to meet the daily water needs of its population of nearly 22 million.

In January 2017, President Anthony Carmona swore in Nikoli Edwards, age 25, as the youngest temporary senator in Trinidad and Tobago’s history. “I have been very much involved in piecing together the puzzle when it comes to how we develop the holistic young person in Trinidad and Tobago,” said Senator Nikoli Edwards in a Wilson Center interview with Roger-Mark De Souza, a Wilson Center Global Fellow, on Edwards’s personal journey into youth advocacy and the importance of engaging young people in decision-making.

“China can simultaneously be the world’s biggest polluter and the leading developer and employer of clean energy technologies,” said Joanna Lewis, an associate professor of science, technology, and international affairs at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at a recent event at The Brookings Institute on China’s local and global environmental agenda. “It’s not just megawatts being added, it’s actual investment in the innovation of these [renewable energy] technologies.”

It is imperative that countries adopt a human security approach to achieve “freedom from hazard impacts”—nationally through a scientific disaster risk reduction strategy and internationally through climate diplomacy.

This summer, Iraqi citizens in Basra demonstrated in the streets to protest a serious public health crisis caused by polluted water. The condition of their water infrastructure was deplorable after years of devastating wars, corruption, and droughts and regional hydropolitics. More than 100,000 people have reportedly been poisoned by polluted water, while recent estimates warn that some 277,000 children are at risk of diseases, such as cholera due to rundown water and sanitation facilities at schools.

Visitors to Norway often remark on the number of men pushing prams around its streets. This summer, those pram-pushing days are growing longer, and not just because of the endless sun. Fathers of children born on or after July 1 will get 15 weeks non-transferable parental leave, rather than the already-generous 10 previously available.

For this World Cities Day, the UN’s theme calls for “building sustainable and resilient cities.” Cities across the Global South are assessing their physical preparedness against future shocks. Can cities that leave out—or often push out—poor workers claim resiliency? These moves are, in fact, weakening any preparedness. The foundations of truly sustainable and resilient cities lie in their residents’ abilities and agency.