This week, newly minted Secretary of Defense James Mattis joined a long list of senior U.S. military leaders who have warned about the national security threats of climate change.

The intelligence community’s landmark Global Water Security assessment in 2012, warned of major water-driven challenges to U.S. national security. The combined assessment of several intelligence agencies foresaw many challenges to U.S. policy objectives and national security arising from protracted drought, declining water quality, and more natural disasters in countries important to U.S. interests. The intelligence community further warned of rising social instability, cross-border tensions, and a steady drain of resources away from other development objectives. These warnings have proven prescient.

Global poverty has been reduced dramatically over the past two decades. Less than 11 percent of the world’s population were living in extreme poverty in 2013 compared to 35 percent in 1990. But improvements have largely come in stable countries. Many of the remaining pockets of extreme poverty are in “fragile states,” countries that are vulnerable to internal and external shocks and can easily tip into crisis when faced with an environmental, economic, social, or political change.

“Turbulent and possibly revolutionary times are ahead for U.S. energy and environmental policy,” said Bobby Magill, a senior science writer at Climate Central, at the Wilson Center on February 3. “If there’s one message the Trump Administration is sending about environmental and climate regulations, it’s this: The future will not look like the past.”

For weeks, the primatologists had followed a group of Grauer’s gorillas over rugged terrain – hacking through dense rainforest; following knife-edged ravines; and crossing a nearly impenetrable mountainous landscape in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

Ten years ago, amateur tilapia farmers in China were able to dig a pond, fill it with fish, add antibiotics and chemicals, and a few months later sell the fish to numerous unregulated processors. In those early days, fish farming created a great economic boom for first-time aquaculture farmers.