At this year’s International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) World Conservation Congress, more than 10,000 scientists, activists, and leaders from around the world committed to finding “nature-based solutions” to reversing environmental declines and securing a healthy, livable planet.

Eddah Senetoi lives with her son in the small pastoralist community of Elangata Waus. They keep cows, goats, sheep, and donkeys to buy food and pay school fees. For her and other pastoralists living in southern Kenya’s Kajiado County, climate change is compounding challenges from land subdivision and privatization, and magnifying social tensions and community conflicts over access to resources.

Last month, headlines around the world heralded a breakthrough for international environmental cooperation. During ongoing ozone treaty negotiations in Rwanda, China broke with the developing world, agreeing with the United States to aggressively phase out hydrofluorocarbons, a significant global warming pollutant found in refrigerators and air conditioners. These changes are expected to make a big difference in combating climate change, mitigating half a Celsius degree of warming.

Climate change isn’t a political issue in many countries, but it is in the United States. If that trend continues much longer, American service members may find themselves at “the intersection of politics and events” as they confront the consequences of climate change head on in the form of increased instability and humanitarian disasters, says Edward J. Erickson in a special issue of the U.S. Marine Corps Press Journal.

Between 1990 and 2015, there was an incredible 44 percent decrease in global maternal mortality rates. But these impressive gains still fell short of the Millennium Development Goal of reducing the global maternal mortality ratio by three quarters.

Record levels of displacement and accelerating climate change have prompted many to wonder if the world is headed toward a more violent future. The nexus of climate change, migration, and conflict is posing fundamental challenges to societies. But not always in the ways you might think. In a new report prepared for the U.S. Agency of International Development, Lauren Herzer Risi and I present a small guide to this controversial and consequential nexus of global trends.