Much of the time, discussion about climate change is focused on the future – How bad will it be? Will it lead to more conflict? Who will be most vulnerable? But it is in fact a current phenomenon. The climate system is already, for all intents and purposes, irrevocably changed and millions of lives have been changed along with it.

The United Nations and the streets of Manhattan are going into global warming saturation mode, from Sunday’s People’s Climate March through the Tuesday climate change summit convened by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and on through an annual green-energy event called Climate Week.

Island communities, particularly those from small island developing states, are often reported in policy documents, academic papers and mainstream media as being “most vulnerable” to climate change and disasters. While such a classification might serve to raise awareness of their plight, or be used as impetus for global action, this approach can also result in unintended (and damaging) attitudes and consequences. This is well-illustrated by recent off-the-record discussions with several donors and policy-makers who have inappropriately implied it is “too late” to “save the islands,” given their vulnerability to current and impending climate change impacts.

Is it possible to prepare for the unexpected? Could anyone have foreseen, for instance, a nuclear meltdown triggered by an earthquake-induced tsunami? Or a brutal band of transnational militants quickly capturing Iraq’s largest dam while attempting to establish a new Islamic caliphate? Perhaps not exactly, but that shouldn’t stop us from anticipating unlikely events, says Chad Briggs, a risk assessment expert and strategy director of consulting firm GlobalInt.

“You can’t build a peaceful world on an empty stomach,” Secretary of State John Kerry said yesterday at a high-level working session on resilience and food security, quoting Norman Borlaug, the father of last century’s “Green Revolution.”

The time has come for us to collectively reexamine – and ultimately move past – the concept of sustainability. The continued invocation of sustainability in policy discussions ignores the emerging realities of the Anthropocene, which is creating a world characterized by extreme complexity, radical uncertainty, and unprecedented change. From a policy perspective, we must face the impossibility of even defining – let alone pursuing – a goal of “sustainability” in such a world. It’s not that sustainability is a bad idea. The question is whether the concept of sustainability is still useful as an environmental governance framework.

Asia is going through an unprecedented wave of urbanization. Secondary and tertiary cities are seeing the most rapid changes in land-use and ownership, social structures, and values as peri-urban and agricultural land become part of metropolitan cityscapes. All the while, climate change is making many of these fast-growing cities more vulnerable to disasters.

“Environmental specialists need to change,” said Anita van Breda at the Wilson Center on June 25. “In the new normal, our work has to have a different relevancy.” [Video Below]