“If you go to some Taiwan beaches, you can see snow,” said Chieh-Shen (Jason) Hu, Ocean Initiative Coordinator for Taiwan’s Society of Wilderness, a 6,000-member organization similar to Sierra Club. Hu was referring to pervasive Styrofoam marine debris from western Taiwan’s oldest industry, oyster aquaculture.

 “Family planning saves lives, even in times of crisis,” said Gwen K. Young, Managing Director at the Global Emergency Response Coalition at a Wilson Center event on October 8 on the importance of providing family planning and reproductive health services in humanitarian settings. Speakers from Save the Children, CARE, the International Rescue Committee, and FP2020 spoke to programmatic successes, innovative solutions, and local partnerships in fragile settings. Young highlighted that 1 in 70 people worldwide need humanitarian assistance and a quarter of these are women and girls of reproductive age. All told, more than 30 million women and girls in 42 countries.

“If you woke up one morning and found the taps in your house were dry, the first thing many of us here would do is pick up our phone and call the utility,” said Gordon Mumbo, Team Leader for Sustainable Water for the Mara River Basin, Winrock International. But for people living in the Mara River Basin, if their taps run dry, there is no utility to call, said Mumbo. Their only choice is to grab the water container and head down to the river where water quality may be poor. Mumbo spoke at the September 30^th event, “Hidden Forces: The Role of Water in Economic Prosperity,” part of the “Water Security for a More Resilient World” series co-hosted by the Wilson Center, Winrock International, and the Sustainable Water Partnership.

Roughly 20 organizations wield some management authority in the high seas, but none of them have conservation as their core mandate, said Liz Karan, Senior Manager of the Protecting Ocean Life on the High Sea Campaign at the Pew Charitable Trusts. She spoke at a recent Wilson Center event hosted by the Polar Institute and Environmental Change and Security Program. The discussion revolved around aspects of a proposed global treaty on conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity in areas beyond the jurisdiction of any country. “The high seas treaty comes in as an opportunity to put conservation at the focus of the discussion of how we manage the high seas,” said Karan.

“We are stripping the life away from the blue planet,” said oceanographer, explorer, and author, Sylvia A. Earle. She keynoted a recent event on marine protected areas in Antarctica and the high seas co-hosted by the Wilson Center and The Pew Charitable Trusts with support from the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation. “Do we want a planet like Mars?” she said. “Most people would say, ‘I don’t think so. I like to breathe. I like water that falls magically out of the sky. I like having a living planet.’”