“With climate change, we can make no small plans—we need to go big,” said Lieutenant General Wallace Gregson (ret.), former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asian and Pacific Security Affairs, during a recent event co-hosted by the Environmental Peacebuilding Association and Wilson Center on opportunities and challenges facing the new administration relating to the environment, peace, and conflict.

Do you remember a year ago when many of us traveled regularly? Do you remember the experience of flying into a major city somewhere in the world, picking up your bags in a modern airport (that probably functioned more efficiently than in the United States), and getting a vehicle to take you downtown? After leaving the airport, we would often drive past miles of informal settlements—self-built shelters unkindly called “slums” much of the time. We may have even found ourselves asking why local authorities “don’t do something” about them.

Large pollution can come in small packages. This is the case with the small plastic pouches, called sachets, that constitute a major source of the plastic waste crisis plaguing the Philippines, a country ranked third in the world for ocean plastic leakage. Filipino consumers throw away a staggering 163 million of these difficult-to-recycle plastic packets each day, which adds up to about 60 billion a year, enough to carpet 130,000 soccer fields.

“Greater attention to pregnant patients as a unique population at higher risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection sequelae, is critical to preventing maternal and neonatal morbidity and mortality,” write the authors of a study in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology examining morbidity and mortality among pregnant women with COVID-19 in Washington state. The study found “markedly higher” hospitalization and fatality rates among this group compared with similarly-aged non-pregnant individuals.

Collapsing ice shelves raised concerns in 2020, but the immediate effects of climate change in the polar regions are merely the tip of the iceberg, write Olivia Popp and Michaela Stith in this month’s top post. What happens in the polar regions doesn’t always stay in the polar regions—it has profound effects on climate and communities around the world.

Waste banks are a cornerstone of Indonesia’s waste reduction efforts. Seeking to prevent plastic waste from getting burned or choking waterways, communities establish these places for people to bring plastic waste to be recycled. It only took a few months to see tangible results at the Bumi Daya Bersih waste bank in West Jakarta. In addition to collecting and sorting waste, the waste bank community is also contributing to waste prevention. A number of regular waste bank customers have started bringing empty plastic packaging that’s not intended to be recycled (yet) but instead refilled with high-quality home and body care products.