At long last, my husband and I are empty-nesters. We have always worked in high-pressure jobs, and while the children were young, I put in plenty of non-work hours to care for them and for the household. My husband was unfailingly helpful, but now that our children are grown, I’m ready to renegotiate our “to do” list.

In 2018, our readers came to New Security Beat to understand how individuals and communities cope in the face of environmental uncertainty, particularly when the rule of law, natural resource management, and social services are lacking.

The unabated growth of natural resource consumption raises risks that we will outstrip the capacities of ecosystems and governance institutions. At the same time, to achieve important global goals related to poverty alleviation, public health, equity and economic development such as those embodied in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), we will simultaneously need more resources and better management of natural resources everywhere.

Fears of Central American caravans and Saharan smugglers keep European and U.S. leaders up at night. Desperate to manage migration, they turn to short-term fixes, which include blocking borders and supporting authoritarian leaders to contain people—their own citizens and others—before they get close to Europe or the United States. This bit of political theater appeals to some, but has limited effects in overall numbers. The long game consists of addressing root causes so people no longer feel compelled to move at all. But this too will do little to prevent migration north. If anything, it will encourage more people to move.

BENGALURU, India – In a small town in the suburbs of this booming city, K.V. Muniraju knows all too well the decade-old battle of securing water for his crops. With groundwater tables continuously falling, the middle-aged farmer once borrowed heavily to dig wells ever deeper.

“For the longest time we thought that water was forever renewable and that it would always be there,” said Gloria Steele, Acting Assistant Administrator for Asia with USAID, at a recent Wilson Center event on water security in High Asia. “We now know that is not the case, and we need to protect it and manage it effectively.”

“Everyone in the community knew that I was the next [to get pregnant], but I was so determined that until I achieve my dream of becoming an accountant, I will not drop out of school, and I will not get pregnant,” said Rebecca Acio, a 19-year-old Ambassador for the Strengthening School-Community Accountability for Girls’ Education (SAGE) DREAMS Project, Uganda. She spoke at a recent Wilson Center event on emerging lessons from the DREAMS Innovation Challenge. As a peer educator at her school in Lira, Uganda, and a temporary dropout herself, Acio “knew what it cost to be a dropout” and worked to identify other at-risk girls to encourage them to stay in school.

In the Arctic, “a new ocean has emerged and we have to deal with it,” said Mike Sfraga, Director of the Wilson Center’s Global Risk & Resilience Program and Polar Institute at a recent water event celebrating the Wilson Center’s 50^th anniversary.