There’s perhaps no better evidence of China’s growing appetite for American agricultural products than the ongoing transformation of the port of Oakland.

In May 2011, two weeks before I was scheduled to start research in the region, a Mongol herder named Mergen was hit by a mining truck while protecting his pastureland in Xilingol, Inner Mongolia. He was dragged 140 feet and killed. His death sparked a month of protests.

The announcement in Washington on September 24 that President Xi Jinping is committing China to a national carbon trading system is the latest step in an important partnership between the two biggest carbon emitters in the world.

Shenzhen sits in subtropical south China, where four-fifths of the country’s water resources flow. The monsoon brings heavy rains from April to September; at its peak, Shenzhen’s more than 7 million residents see pouring rain almost every day. So why is this city facing a serious water shortage?

As the world prepares for a pivotal climate conference in Paris this December, countries are offering their national plans to tackle a changing climate. These plans, known as intended nationally determined contributions (INDCs), contain details of what each country is prepared to do as part of a new global climate agreement. While the public focus is often on mitigation – how much countries are willing to reduce emissions, by when, and with what degree of transparency – adaptation to the impacts of climate change demands the same level of attention. In fact, the last round of international climate talks in Lima invited parties to include adaptation in their INDCs.

In March 1999, not long after he was sworn in as the 47^th mayor of Oakland, Jerry Brown called Lesley Estes, the supervisor of the city’s watershed protection program. Brown, who is now California’s governor, wanted the city staffer he called “Creek Lady” to describe the most formidable ideas she had to conserve natural areas, make parks more beautiful, and clean up the city’s waters.

At the launch of A New Climate for Peace, a new report on climate-fragility risks produced for the G7 by a consortium of international partners including the Wilson Center, USAID Deputy Assistant Administrator Christian Holmes called water a common denominator for climate risk.