Women and girls with disabilities worldwide are subject to multiple forms of discrimination—a fact that the 2022 International Day for Persons with Disabilities brings into sharp focus. Yet while all people with disabilities (PWD) face exclusion and widespread stigma, women face the additional burden of exclusion from full participation in economic and cultural activities. Both forms of discrimination result from the collaboration of outdated laws and prevalent societal stigmatization.

There’s a scene near the climax of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express when Hercule Poirot starts to plot out the possible murderers. There’s Colonel Arbuthnot, who had opportunity and motive. There’s Mr. McQueen, suspicious in his transparent attempts to misdirect the detective. There’s even the haughty, toad-faced Princess Dragomiroff. Like practically everyone on the train, she had good reason to wish the evil Ratchett dead.

Cairo hoped that COP27 would focus on its stated agenda: climate change adaptation. Yet it was human rights concerns—such as jailed pro-democracy activist Alaa Abdel Fattah’s hunger strike and rumors of restricted internet access to human rights platforms—that often stole headlines from climate policy or funding pledges. The persistence of human rights coverage demonstrated that Egypt and many other governments fail to recognize that strong governance, human rights protections, and climate change adaptation are mutually reinforcing and have overlapping policy actions.

Three decades. That is how much time is left to decarbonize the world’s energy systems to limit global warming to 1.5°C, according to the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. Achieving this feat requires renewable energy systems be deployed at an unprecedented speed and scale. While daunting, however, the good news is that this transformation may not cost as much as many expected just a decade ago, thanks to rapid cost declines in renewable energy technologies.

As COP27 draws to a close, the conference is proving to be a disappointment for environmental advocates focused on eliminating the planet’s number one emitter: coal-fired power.

Yet only a year ago, at the UN climate talks in Glasgow, it felt different. At that time, one could be forgiven for getting excited about the prospects for phasing out coal fired power. Countries had committed to ending its use. Tantalizingly, coalitions of international partners and multilateral development institutions also introduced mechanisms that could help finance closures at scale.

In the run up to COP 27 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, the first summit of its kind to be hosted in the region, water is rising on the agenda, and for good reason. In a new essay for the Wilson Center, Global Fellow Peter Schwartzstein explores how governments across the Middle East are approaching a world with less water – and to what effect. Drawing on a decade of environmental reportage from the Middle East, Schwartzstein sketches out how, why, and with what consequences states have adopted often dramatically divergent strategies.