“The act of caregiving has unique impacts on women, in terms of economic, emotional, and physical well-being,” said Dr. Belén Garijo, the CEO for healthcare and executive board member of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, at a recent Wilson Center event.

“We cannot achieve our goals of ending maternal and child deaths without addressing critical health system barriers around the world,” said Grace Chee of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)’s flagship Maternal and Child Survival Program at a recent Wilson Center event. To improve the lives of mothers and children, health workers must address the underlying causes of poor health outcomes, including systemic weaknesses in health care governance, financing, and human resources.

“Some people are more vulnerable than others” to climate change, said Judy Oglethorpe, senior director of Multilateral Program Development of the World Wildlife Fund-US (WWF) at a recent event on climate change, biodiversity, and livelihoods. Oglethorpe is the chief of party for the Hariyo Ban (Green Forests) Program, which seeks to increase ecological and community resilience to climate change in two biodiverse landscapes in Nepal. Taking a “multi-scale approach let[s] us focus on the most vulnerable people,” said Oglethorpe, and “work at different scales and across different disciplines…to reduce people’s vulnerability.”

The effects of climate change on an abandoned U.S. nuclear project in Greenland could create not just environmental problems, but also disrupt military politics and spur diplomatic conflicts. My new article in Global Environmental Politics finds that climate change will eventually expose toxic waste, long immobilized by ice, at Camp Century, which the U.S. military left in the 1960s. This situation—which has already spurred the dismissal of Greenland’s foreign minister—could be the canary in the coalmine signaling that climate change will further complicate the already contentious politics of military bases.

“There is no healthcare delivery system for non-pregnant 15- to 24-year olds,” said the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator, Ambassador Deborah Birx, at a recent Wilson Center event on efforts to reduce the prevalence of HIV/AIDS among adolescent girls in sub-Saharan Africa. In 2014, the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) established the DREAMS program, which aims to create “a health care system where young people interact in a proactive and positive way,” said Birx.

This One Goes to 11.

Eleven years ago this week, the New Security Beat began covering population, environment, and conflict connections. Today, our goal remains the same as in 2007: to provide insight on today’s new security threats and to share overlooked opportunities for cooperation. As we wrote then, “countries in crises often share the problems of rapid population growth and deteriorating environmental resources”: and unfortunately, the same trends continue undermine peace and deepen poverty. But we’ve also analyzed notable global efforts, including the Sustainable Development Goals and the growing resilience agenda, that offer hope for progress.