A little over a decade ago when I first became interested in the subject of environmental security, it took me ages to understand what I have since been eager to stress: environmental security is not a concept but rather a debate.

Several high-profile reports in the last few months have suggested that climate change and natural resource scarcity contributed to the events that have rocked the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) since December 2010. Thomas Friedman is apparently working on a Showtime documentary about the topic. But what exactly was the role of environmental factors in the mass movement?

The original version of this article appeared on the Environment, Conflict, and Cooperation (ECC) Platform.

Climate-induced migration in Mexico is a complex issue and the future impact of this phenomenon is neither clear nor agreed upon. The Environment, Conflict and Cooperation (ECC) team talked to Elizabeth Deheza from the Royal United Services Institute for Defense and Security Studies. She and Jorge Mora are the authors of the recent study “Climate Change, Migration and Security: Best-Practice Policy and Operational Options for Mexico.”

Amid the growing number of reports warning that climate change could threaten national security, another potentially dangerous – but counterintuitive – dimension has been largely ignored. Could efforts to reduce our carbon footprint and lower our vulnerability to climate change inadvertently exacerbate existing conflicts – or create new ones?

Natural disasters have dominated news coverage in the past several years, with many observers noting a distressing rise in the frequency and scale of disasters as well as rising costs. Despite these worrying trends, a critical mass of leadership and public support for doing something about it is emerging.

The original version of this article, by Matthew Berger, appeared on The Interdependent.

Last summer, after walking for days to a refugee camp across the South Sudan border, some Sudanese refugees reportedly chose to dig holes to reach muddy water rather than face the fist-fights breaking out around a failing tap. Boreholes dug by aid agencies collapsed in the crumbling soil. Even the coming rainy season brought more challenges than relief, washing out roads used by water tanker trucks and threatening the camp with flooding.

Once considered a model for Sahelian democracy, Mali’s liberal regime (assessed as “free” in Freedom House’s annual survey of democratic governance continuously from 2000 to 2011) virtually disintegrated in March 2012 when a group of junior army officers, frustrated by the central government’s half-hearted response to a rebellion in the state’s vast northern tier, found themselves – somewhat accidently – in control of the state.

Water is the foundation of human society and will become even more critical as population growth, development, and climate change put pressure on already-shrinking water resources in the years ahead. But will this scarcity fuel conflict between countries with shared waters, as some have predicted, or will it create more impetus for cooperation?