The intelligence community’s landmark Global Water Security assessment in 2012, warned of major water-driven challenges to U.S. national security. The combined assessment of several intelligence agencies foresaw many challenges to U.S. policy objectives and national security arising from protracted drought, declining water quality, and more natural disasters in countries important to U.S. interests. The intelligence community further warned of rising social instability, cross-border tensions, and a steady drain of resources away from other development objectives. These warnings have proven prescient.

As the 1990s drew to a close, there was a sense that much of the momentum gained at the first Earth Summit on sustainable development, a positive, affirming environmental narrative, was waning.

In recent months, the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) has been in the headlines – and for all the wrong reasons.

As climate change threatens the stability of ecosystems around the world, the preservation of forests is seen as a “win-win” solution to curbing planet-warming emissions while producing value for developing country economies.

For weeks, the primatologists had followed a group of Grauer’s gorillas over rugged terrain – hacking through dense rainforest; following knife-edged ravines; and crossing a nearly impenetrable mountainous landscape in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

Ten years ago, amateur tilapia farmers in China were able to dig a pond, fill it with fish, add antibiotics and chemicals, and a few months later sell the fish to numerous unregulated processors. In those early days, fish farming created a great economic boom for first-time aquaculture farmers.