Late last year, Reuters reported that the U.S. Defense Department plans to fund mining and processing operations for rare earth elements—a class of minerals for which China dominates the global market, producing over 80 percent of the world’s supply. In the past, China has restricted exports of rare earths, and recently threatened to do so again. Even with a phase one trade deal hammered out between the United States and China, natural resources are likely to remain a point of geopolitical tension.

Environmental peacebuilding is a good idea. As a practice, it aims to address simultaneously environmental problems and challenges related to violent conflict. Examples include the promotion of environmental cooperation between rival states, conflict-sensitive adaptation to climate change, and restoring access to land and water in post-conflict societies. As a concept, environmental peacebuilding directs researchers’ and politicians’ attention to cooperative adaptation as a response to environmental stress. It thus helps to correct one-sided narratives about environment-conflict links.

In the Global South, climate change-induced resettlement requires a holistic and integrated approach, involving all stakeholders—state institutions, local customary and civil society institutions—and in particular respectful engagement with local traditional actors and networks. In a policy brief for the Toda Peace Institute, we examined climate change-induced resettlement from the Carteret Islands in the Pacific, a case which encompasses a broad range of issues relevant to future relocation efforts elsewhere. Those who seek to make this type of resettlement possible would do well to heed these lessons.

For two weeks, Hurricane Dorian, one of the strongest hurricanes to make landfall in the Pacific, decimated large swaths of the Caribbean displacing 70,000 people and killing at least 50. Natural disasters like Hurricane Dorian in the Caribbean have only been worsening over the last decade, a trend often attributed to warming oceanic and atmospheric temperatures.

“As a leader in providing global humanitarian aid, the United States must be a leader in protecting all aid recipients,” said Congresswoman Chrissy Houlahan (D-PA-6) at a recent event on Capitol Hill about gender-based violence in humanitarian settings. A violation against human rights, gender-based violence (GBV) is deeply rooted in gender inequality. It’s a global phenomenon that involves sexual, physical, and/or psychological violence, including child marriage, female genital mutilation, and other harmful practices.