On the same day Japan began wastewater releases from the Fukushima nuclear power plant in late August 2023, the website of China’s customs agency announced the country would “completely suspend the import of aquatic products originating from Japan.”

The Arctic is believed to be a pristine environment, far removed from littered city streets and toxic industrial emissions. I study human pollution and I found it hard to believe that my fellow researchers and I would find so much litter out here. It was even harder to believe that what we uncovered closely resembled the contents of my own closet, over 3,000 kilometers (2,000 miles) away in Toronto.

In every Chinese city, there is an army of motorcycles and mopeds weaving through the traffic jams, and sometimes even venturing on sidewalks, to deliver millions of food and e-commerce orders each day. Meituan, one of China’s most popular food delivery apps, delivers 30 million orders a day, serving up 100 million plastic containers. According to Greenpeace, e-commerce and express delivery in China generated 9.4 million tons of packaging waste in 2018 and will likely triple to 41.3 million tons by 2025.

From Friday night fish fries to shrimp cocktails, people sheltering in place have learned how to cook their favorite dishes at home. As a result U.S. seafood sales have doubled during the pandemic. Globally, the United States ranks fifth in seafood consumption and China—where hunger for seafood has skyrocketed with rising incomes—is number one. While wild fisheries are on the decline, aquaculture is expanding to increase the global food supply.

On July 16, 2021, after nearly two decades of research and preparation, China finally opened what is now the world’s largest national emissions trading scheme (ETS). The much anticipated move follows the central government’s ambitious pledge to reach peak CO2 emissions before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060. Several Chinese cities and provinces, including Shanghai, have been operating ETS pilots for several years. For Shanghai, the rollout of China’s national ETS bolsters its existing carbon marketplace and complements the multitude of other local and national decarbonization initiatives the city is undertaking. The national scheme is an encouraging step in China’s climate action, but on its own it is not a silver bullet to decarbonize the economy.

People’s lives and livelihoods are at stake if China does not cooperate with its regional neighbors over downstream effects of the Tibetan plateau’s glaciers. The Hindu Kush Himalayas’ (HKH) numerous glaciers are known as the “Water Towers of Asia” and the “Third Pole.” Over 1.9 billion people depend on water systems that stem from HKH glaciers. Climate change will fundamentally alter the hydrology of the water basins—killing or displacing thousands of people as the changes unfold. Asia cannot continue with national or bilateral plans being the primary climate change adaptation strategies: basin-wide cooperation is essential. Unfortunately, conflicts and simmering disputes in the region make this a staggering goal to achieve.

With their blocky stamped metal heads and long arms, the India Mark II and Afridev hand water pumps are hardly aesthetically appealing. What matters is their design. That is, how well do they work?

Introduced in the 1980s, manufactured by the millions, and installed in communities across Africa and Asia, the two hand pumps are the most popular tools for lifting water to the surface from rural underground reserves. In that capacity, the two pumps occupy prominent space in the WASH sector’s long-running and formative debate over whether the global campaign is succeeding or slipping in the effort to attain universal access to clean water, sanitation, and hygiene. 

That future wars will be fought over water, rather than oil, has become something of a truism, particularly with regard to the Middle East. It’s also one that most water experts have refuted time and time and time again. But while this preference for cooperation over conflict may (and emphasis on may) remain true of interstate disputes, this blanket aversion to the ‘water wars’ narrative fails to account for the rash of other water-related hostilities that are erupting across many of the world’s drylands. As neither full-on warfare nor issues that necessarily resonate beyond specific, sometimes isolated areas, these ‘grey zone’ clashes don’t seem to be fully registering in the broader discussion of water conflicts. In failing to adequately account for the volume of localized violence, the world is probably chronically underestimating the extent to which water insecurity is already contributing to conflict.