The climate agreement reached in Paris last December, seen by many as a critical step toward lowering greenhouse gas emissions, was big news – perhaps too big. Pointing to the thousands of articles about COP-21, National Geographic Senior Editor Marla Cone asked at a recent Wilson Center panel, “Is this a wise use of resources, when newsrooms are so stretched thin, to have everybody pretty much chasing the same stories?”

Since its adoption after COP-21 in December 2015, the Paris Agreement has received mixed reviews. Some stakeholders, mostly industrialized countries, see the climate deal as a success. Developing countries have generally been more cautiously optimistic, welcoming the agreement as the best option under the circumstances.

If you Google “arcane bureaucratic tool” the Department of Defense Directive (DODD) should be high on the results list. That said, these little-known directives can be very influential in how the Pentagon conducts its day-to-day business. Late last week, Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work signed out a DODD that may just be the most meaningful climate-related document the Department of Defense has released.

The year is 2022. Strong El Niño and La Niña events in successive years have drastically reduced wheat yields in India and Australia and increased the range of certain pests and plant pathogens in the Western Hemisphere. Moreover, a drought across North America has reduced corn and soybean yields significantly. Global commodity prices are up 262 percent over long-term averages. These price increases are compounding other social and economic challenges, contributing to social unrest in several food-importing nations.

In November 2015, experts from a variety of fields gathered at the Peace Palace in The Hague for the Planetary Security Conference, one of the first large-scale conferences on environmental security and what is hoped to be the start of an annual series. The conference report gives a sense of the diverse discussions held in the Netherlands.

It is “not sufficient to look at history for lessons on how we should prepare for and prevent future security risks in a climate change world,” said Swathi Veeravalli, research scientist at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Geospatial Research Laboratory, at the Wilson Center on January 14. Climate change and the extreme weather events it brings pose an “unprecedented” threat to human security. [Video Below]

Around the world, urbanization and climate change are transforming societies and environments, and the stakes could not be higher for the poor and marginalized. The 2015 UN climate conference in Paris (COP-21) highlighted the need for coordinated action to address the profound injustice of the world’s most disadvantaged people bearing the greatest costs of climate impacts. Among those at the COP were mayors from around the world advocating for the important role of cities in these efforts.

An article in the Annual Review of Sociology reviews much of the research on the relationship between environmental factors and migration, providing a timely overview of a complex field. “Migration is often a household strategy to diversify risk,” write Lori Hunter et al., but can be influenced by any number of determinants, including at the macro level (e.g., environmental, social, cultural, economic, and political dynamics), the meso level (e.g., intervening obstacles and facilitators), as well as the micro level (e.g., personal and household characteristics).