Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, communities across the globe are experiencing unprecedented climate disasters.

According to modeling by ProPublica, the Pulitzer Center, and The New York Times Magazine, in the event that governments take “modest action to reduce climate emissions, about 680,000 climate migrants might move from Central America and Mexico to the United States by 2050.” That number leaps to above a million people in a scenario where no action is taken. The impacts of climate change on people’s decision to move are not constrained to the developing world, or even across borders. A recent study found that one in 12 Americans currently residing in the southern U.S. will move to California and the Northwest over the next 45 years because of climate influences.

The polar regions of Antarctica and the Arctic have long captured the world’s imagination as seas and continents covered in unending ice. But the reality of the two regions is quickly shifting, with cascading consequences for the globe.

Climate change will upend the 21^st century world order. It will redefine how we live and work, and change the systems of production, trade, economics, and finance. Even now, in the midst of a global pandemic, it is clear that climate change will be the defining issue of this century. In fact, COVID-19 has only underscored the inadequacy of our responses to global crises and heightened the urgency of this call to action. 21^st century diplomacy will have to raise climate ambition, shape the transformative systems change needed, and promote and facilitate new modes of multilateral collaboration.

By the end of 2020, Turkey’s long awaited Ilisu dam project will be complete. Turkey argues this new dam will bring power independence and shore up economic stability. As an added bonus, it ensures water resiliency in a water-scarce region. Meanwhile, environmentalists bemoan habitat destruction, and Iraqis worry about water shortages they will experience down river. For the Kurds, the Ilisu dam project wipes out thousands of years of culture. For them, it’s the latest in a methodical cultural extermination which has been their plight since the founding of the Republic of Turkey.

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.

As Beijing prepares to host the 2022 Winter Olympics, China’s environmental activities are once again on center stage. The Wilson Center’s China Environment Forum took the top spot this month with Karen Mancl and Richard Liu’s coverage of the new program report, “Closing the Loop on China’s Water Pollution,” which details what China can learn from New York, Washington, D.C., and Singapore, to advance its wastewater and carbon reduction targets.

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.