TUTICORIN, India – Among the 75 government agencies that manage and regulate this bewitching and often impassioned nation, there is no Ministry of the Future. There should be.

Despite recent press coverage about the violence against international environmental defenders, another prominent figure has been murdered in cold blood.

From 1990 to 2013, the notorious tiger poacher Kuttu Bahelia and his extended family – brothers, uncles, and their wives and children – reportedly killed hundreds of tigers and leopards in the tiger-rich Indian states of Maharashtra and Karnataka, according to law enforcement informants and media reports. “Even if half that [estimate] is correct, it is still a very significant number,” says Belinda Wright, who directs the non-profit Wildlife Protection Society of India (WPSI).

Whether or not we respond to climate change – and the security implications of that decision – is a major public policy question. But increasingly experts are paying closer attention to how we respond.

Do you experience information overload? Feel like there’s always another crisis to worry about? Sense a kind of chaos? Well, you may be a citizen of the early 21^st century.

2017 promises to be a key year for U.S. government leadership on a variety of issues. Not least among them is global water security. Never have the challenges of global water security been so severe, and never have the opportunities for American leadership in the sector been greater.

“Made in China” products surround us, yet few consumers have anything more than a foggy idea of where in China their phones, computers, and other goods come from. Hunan Province in South Central China is not only the home of spicy food, but the world’s largest mines for non-ferrous metals used in many electronic devices. Nearly all the glass panels for Apple and Samsung smartphones are manufactured in Hunan as well. While this multibillion-dollar phone industry has been a boon for Hunan’s economy, it has also produced seriously polluted rivers and soil.

The Earth’s front-line defenders are disappearing at an astonishing rate. On average three environmental activists were killed each week in 2015, according to a recent report from the United Nations special rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders. Global Witness, an international NGO that documents natural resource extraction, corruption, and violence, reports a 59 percent increase in deaths last year compared to 2014. In total, 185 killings of environmental defenders were recorded by Global Witness in 2015.