“For people who have been refugees for the last 30 years, protecting Afghan wildlife was a way of protecting your own identity,” said Alex Dehgan, CEO and founder of Conservation X Labs, who recently spoke at the Wilson Center at the launch of his book, The Snow Leopard Project: And Other Adventures in Warzone Conservation. He credited his success in Afghanistan to crucial community members. By tapping into their local pride in conservation, Dehgan was able to establish the foundations for the country’s first national park, Band-e-Amir National Park, which opened 2009 in order to protect the endangered snow leopard and the rich biodiversity of Bamyan Province.  

For those working at the intersection of environment, conflict, and peace, 2018 was a notable year. A new conceptual and operational framework for environmental peacebuilding began to emerge. Two particularly substantial developments in 2018 helped to institutionalize environmental peacebuilding: the debut of a massive open online course (MOOC) on environmental security and sustaining peace and the launch of the Environmental Peacebuilding Association.

The 2019 Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community, released on January 29, mentions climate change as a threat that is “likely to fuel competition for resources, economic distress, and social discontent through 2019 and beyond.” The report features new topics such as election interference and threats to economic competitiveness while still including continuing threats such as cyber espionage and attacks, terrorism, and climate change. As a statement from Director of National Intelligence (DNI), Daniel R. Coats, for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the assessment provides an overview of the national security threats facing the nation.

On 25 January 2019, the UN Security Council held an open debate to discuss the security implications of climate-related disaster events. The meeting, initiated by the Dominican Republic, underscored the global nature of climate-related disasters. Most speakers highlighted the need for better climate risk management as an important contribution to safeguarding international peace and security. The debate marks the beginning of a year in which climate security ranks high on the UN’s agenda.

On January 22, Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Daniel R. Coats released the National Intelligence Strategy (NIS) for 2019, which represents a departure from the last such strategy. While the previous 2014 National Intelligence Strategy specifically noted that food, water, and energy resource insecurity contribute to instability, the 2019 NIS does not mention these concerns beyond a single reference to climate change and resource scarcity as “pressure points.”

Until recently, if a natural disaster destroyed or damaged critical infrastructure, U.S. disaster relief law generally required it to be replaced or rebuilt in a “substantially similar” manner. This requirement made no sense for several reasons. In some cases, old, outdated infrastructure no longer exists, so replacing it in the same manner would be difficult, if not impossible.

Doula Village lies 55 kilometers (34 miles) northeast of New Delhi on a flat expanse of Uttar Pradesh farmland close to the Hindon River. Until the 1980s Doula Village’s residents, then numbering 7,000, and its farmers and grain merchants, thrived on land that yielded ample harvests of rice, millet, and mung beans. The bounty was irrigated with clean water transported directly from the river, or with the sweet groundwater drawn from shallow wells 7 meters (23 feet) deep.