SHENZHEN, China – In 1980, the year Deng Xiaoping established Shenzhen as China’s first special economic zone, opening its mercantile sectors to market capitalism and free trade principles, an attractive, tree-shaded commercial district known as Dongmen was home to 30,000 residents near the center of a metropolitan region of 300,000.

Thirty-five years later, Dongmen is a crowded commercial neighborhood of 300,000 residents at the edge of a metropolitan region of 18 million, China’s fourth largest.

In the hierarchy of global and national security challenges, climate change comes out near the top, said a panel of distinguished defense, diplomacy, and intelligence leaders at the Wilson Center on November 17. [Video Below]

The most important and anticipated climate change conference in years is finally underway. In some ways, as Bill McKibben and Andrew Revkin have pointed out, its success is relatively assured thanks to the number of major commitments countries have already made. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to see here. “The conference isn’t the game – it’s the scoreboard,” writes McKibben. To extend the metaphor even more, you might call it the league scoreboard, giving us a glimpse of many different storylines playing out.

In 2013, nearly 300,000 women died during pregnancy and childbirth. The majority of those deaths were in developing countries and entirely preventable. 500 dollar loan. Much of the effort towards reducing this number has been focused on what governments should do differently, but the private sector plays just as important a role as the public sector, said a panel of experts at the Wilson Center on September 17. [Video Below]

In his speech on climate change and national security on November 10, Secretary of State John Kerry said climate change is already a “threat multiplier,” and that worse is to be expected if climate change continues unchecked. But the relationship between the environment and violent conflict is complex and often indirect. Researchers have been wrangling for years over the role that global environmental change plays in fueling conflict and state fragility.

The dark eyes and hair of the Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, and Afghans almost blend with the other migrants’. The brown skin tones are also not giveaways, but ask them where they come from, and you notice the hesitation – trying hard to blend into the crowd of Syrian migrants at Europe’s border crossings, afraid of being spotted and sent back.

The recent news that China has been underreporting its already globe-leading coal consumption by nearly 20 percent for the last decade underscores the scale of its air pollution crisis.

SHENZHEN, China – To some extent, the contemporary industrial age is a global narrative of substance abuse and recovery.