The polar regions of Antarctica and the Arctic have long captured the world’s imagination as seas and continents covered in unending ice. But the reality of the two regions is quickly shifting, with cascading consequences for the globe.

“We need more Indigenous midwives,” said Claire Dion Fletcher, an Indigenous Potawatomi-Lenape Registered Midwife and co-chair of the National Aboriginal Council of Midwives (NACM), at a recent Wilson Center event with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the International Confederation of Midwives about Indigenous midwifery. Globally, Indigenous women experience worse maternal health outcomes than non-Indigenous women. In the United States, risk of maternal death is twice as high for Native women than white women, while in Australia the risk is four and a half times higher.

Simply put, without water there is no food. Global food and nutritional security require resilient agricultural systems, which, in turn, depend on reliable and sustainable supplies of freshwater, whether from rainfall or irrigation. It is an often-neglected dependency, and one that threatens to undermine our ability to meet our future food needs and maintain the ecosystems upon which all life depends.

Climate change will upend the 21^st century world order. It will redefine how we live and work, and change the systems of production, trade, economics, and finance. Even now, in the midst of a global pandemic, it is clear that climate change will be the defining issue of this century. In fact, COVID-19 has only underscored the inadequacy of our responses to global crises and heightened the urgency of this call to action. 21^st century diplomacy will have to raise climate ambition, shape the transformative systems change needed, and promote and facilitate new modes of multilateral collaboration.

“The gender perspective highlights how pre-existing inequalities and vulnerabilities are exacerbated in conflict and in disasters,” said Susanne Kozak, a doctoral candidate at Monash University at a recent event hosted by the Environmental Peacebuilding Association and University of Melbourne’s Faculty of Science.

“The exploitation of the mining and trade of conflict minerals in the eastern DRC [Democratic Republic of the Congo] has contributed to instability, violence, displacement of people, and severe human rights abuses,” says the Government Accountability Office (GAO) in its annual report, Conflict Minerals: Actions Needed to Assess Progress Addressing Armed Groups’ Exploitation of Minerals. The report examines a sample of filings from 1,083 companies that submitted conflict mineral disclosures required by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 2019.

By the end of 2020, Turkey’s long awaited Ilisu dam project will be complete. Turkey argues this new dam will bring power independence and shore up economic stability. As an added bonus, it ensures water resiliency in a water-scarce region. Meanwhile, environmentalists bemoan habitat destruction, and Iraqis worry about water shortages they will experience down river. For the Kurds, the Ilisu dam project wipes out thousands of years of culture. For them, it’s the latest in a methodical cultural extermination which has been their plight since the founding of the Republic of Turkey.