As you walk through the supermarket, you’ve probably noticed labels like “Rainforest Alliance Certified,” “Fair Trade,” or “Green Seal.” These certifications were created to help consumers use their purchasing power to reward companies that treat workers fairly and limit their harm to the environment. What’s missing is health, particularly women’s health. Too often these standards focus narrowly on occupational safety rather than addressing broader, but relevant, health needs of workers.

In today’s world of fast fashion, a $4 crop top travel across continents faster than a letter, and new trends die before a customer hits the “checkout” prompt. Yet the global obsession with cheap clothing creates apparel soaked in a cocktail of dyes, plasticizers, and forever chemicals, that linger far longer than the consumer forces that make them trendy.

The global apparel sector is valued at over $1.8 trillion, and it is the world’s second most chemical-intensive industry after agriculture. For big manufacturing hubs in Southeast Asia (particularly India, Bangladesh, Pakistan), textiles represent an economic lifeline.

The numbers are staggering. A third of the food produced in the world is lost or wasted—from farms and food processing factories to grocery stores, restaurants, and homes. This growing mountain of rotting food is a major methane emitter, accounting for 8 to 10 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. If food waste were a country, it would be the third largest greenhouse gas emitter, with the United States and China as leading food wasters. 

A window into what we’re reading at the Stimson Center’s Environmental Security Program

Heat-Related Deaths May Have Tripled during Europe’s Heat Wave (Washington Post) 

A record-breaking heat wave in late June and early July pushed temperatures well above 100°F across Europe. Analysis from Imperial College London and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine found that of the 2,300 heat-related deaths in 12 major European cities between June 23 and July 2, 1,500 would not have occurred without the additional 1.3°C of warming caused by climate change.  

A few days ago, I bought a cucumber at the grocery store. Hermetically sealed in a layer of plastic as if bracing itself for interstellar travel rather than a trip to my kitchen, I struggled to open it, my patience thinning with the plastic. At one point I considered using my teeth. That’s when it hit me: was this really necessary?

When Secretary of State Marco Rubio formally declared the “era” of USAID over on March 28, 2025, it represented an extraordinary sea change for US foreign aid deployed over the past six decades.

Yet the world has changed dramatically since the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) was established by the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 in the middle of the Cold War. So, there is every reason to thoughtfully consider what foreign aid should look like today as we navigate an era of Great Power Competition (GPC).

“It seems like the news is always bad, right?” observed retired climate and atmospheric scientist James Kossin in a BBC interview last autumn.

Kossin was describing how climate change is weakening the wind shear patterns that have helped lessen the impacts of tropical cyclones in the United States. And, indeed, there is mounting evidence for his observation.

In an era of apparent decline in international cooperation and rising crises, freshwater offers an area in which joint approaches remain absolutely essential—especially since water often transcends the boundaries of nation-states. 

Cooperation has long been the preferred approach in dealing with water resources shared with neighboring countries. Since the first—and so far, only—water war in 2550 B.C.E., states have favored cooperative action over conflict to manage, protect, or develop our planet’s 313 transboundary surface water basins and 468 transboundary aquifers.