A window into what we are reading at the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program

Shedding Light on Imperial Oil’s Dark Waters (Mongabay) 

Canada has the fourth-largest tar sands (oil deposits) in the world. Separating the bitumen used in industries and construction creates large volumes of toxic wastewater, which is stored in tailings ponds that now cover a staggering 270 square kilometers. Unresolved infrastructure mishaps at one such site in Alberta operated by Imperial Oil means that contaminants have polluted nearby waters so significantly that it has affected public health and the livelihoods of indigenous communities in downstream areas.

Over 79 million people are currently forcibly displaced within their own country or across international borders as a result of conflict or natural disaster. As Filippo Grandi, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, explained in 2020, “resolving forced displacement is not only a moral or humanitarian imperative, but also deals with issues at the heart of the [Security] Council’s mandate to maintain international peace and security.”

As a world still dominated by patriarchy struggles with a deadly pandemic, the countries that have successfully navigated the global COVID-19 pandemic are distinguished by the gender of their leadership.  Across the world, countries headed by women and representing diverse cultures—from Germany, Norway, and Finland, to Taiwan, New Zealand, and Namibia—have managed the crisis more effectively, with fewer fatalities and less livelihood loss than others. But what distinguishes these health winners is not just the female shape of their leaders but the feminist shape of their societies. Even more gender-balanced societies headed by men—like Canada—do better in health crises than their less equitable peers like the United States. On the other hand, the most patriarchal countries headed by regressive strongmen do worse at every level of development. Today, we see this in Brazil, which until recently had managed health crises well under less masculinist leadership.

“While COVID-19 has wreaked havoc the world over, history has proven, and recent data agrees that the hardest hit will be the world’s women and girls and populations already impacted by racism and discrimination,” said Sarah Barnes, Project Director of the Maternal Health Initiative and Women and Gender Advisor at the Wilson Center, at a recent event on the impact of COVID-19 on race and gender inequities. Coronavirus has hurt women and girls in many ways. Among them, women have been pushed back into the home.  And healthcare workers and caregivers who are mostly women are jeopardizing their own health, caring for others.

The world is undergoing a period of demographic transition which presents both opportunities and challenges for governments. A report by the Atlantic Council’s Mathew Burrows, formerly of the National Intelligence Council, Reducing the Risks from Rapid Demographic Change, examines the changes in population structures across high-, upper-middle-, lower-middle-, and low-income countries.

Featured side by side at the top of The New York Times home page recently were two stories: one on the United States and China, the world’s largest producers of carbon emissions, committing to a global climate agreement, another on how rising seas are already affecting coastal communities in the United States.

The Nile River is shared by 11 countries, for which it is vital for food and energy production, freshwater, and as a means of transportation. Sharing the resources of the Nile has, however, been politically difficult. Recently, the construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam has caused a major dispute with downstream Egypt which fears the dam will affect water flow in its own territory.

2015 was a historic year for international commitments to sustainable development, climate change action, and new kinds of peacebuilding. For governments and policymakers, now comes the difficult task of living up to those commitments. [Video Below]