“The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is an attempt to get an international group of scientists together to assess what we know about climate change,” says Geoff Dabelko in an interview with the Wilson Center’s Context program. “That is not a quick process.”

Vulnerability to climate change is in part determined by exposure to specific changes – proximity to low lying coastal areas or areas of likely drought – but state capacity also plays a major role. And interventions targeting either must reflect the complex links that bind the two, says International Alert’s Janani Vivekananda in an interview with adelphi’s Environment, Conflict, and Cooperation platform.

Increasingly disruptive protests are likely if oil, gas, and mining companies and national governments don’t pay closer attention to indigenous populations’ needs as Western Amazon basin resources are developed, an expert warned.

Last year a Kiribati man, Ioane Teitiota, claimed asylum in New Zealand, stating that his home island, which is on average just two meters above sea level, was becoming uninhabitable thanks to rising seas. So-called “king tides” routinely wash over entire portions of the archipelago.

USAID funding is “far outstripped” by private investment and business relationships in “nearly every country” in which it works – and that’s a good thing, according to USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah. [Video Below]

As the war in Syria shows no signs of letting up, a recent article in Middle Eastern Studies put forward the hypothesis that the brutal conflict was triggered by government mismanagement of the country’s recent drought, which lasted from 2006 to 2010. It’s a story we’ve heard before.