Blogs & Opinions

International Women’s Day: Women at the Heart of Climate Action

Mar 8, 2022

The theme for International Women’s Day, 8 March, 2022 is “Gender equality today for a sustainable tomorrow,” recognizing the leading role of women and girls…

International Women’s Day Celebrates the Contribution of Women and Girls as Climate Solution Multipliers

Mar 8, 2022

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over the past three years led the Obama administration in making international women’s issues central to progressive foreign policy. A…

States Reluctant to Strengthen Laws Protecting the Environment from War

Mar 8, 2022 | Conflict and Environment Observatory

The invasion of Ukraine has once again highlighted the threat that wars pose to the environment. It has also drawn attention to the weakness of…

What Do We Know About Climate Change, Peace and Conflict?

Mar 8, 2022 | Tobias Ide

Very recently, Working Group 2 of the IPCC released its latest (sixth) report on the impacts of climate change, including on peace and conflict.

The peace- and conflict-related…

War in Ukraine Boosts the EU’s Energy Transition

Mar 7, 2022 | Alexander Verbeek

This week feels like living in November 1989 or September 2001; the news cycle moves so fast that you can’t keep track. So you follow…

Education - A Crucial Piece of the Climate Justice and Gender Equality Puzzle

Mar 7, 2022 | Susan Hopgood

For decades we have mobilised across the world and have worked towards gender equality, and increasingly over the last few years to address climate injustice.…

How Are Nuclear Power Plants Protected by Law During War?

Mar 7, 2022 | Anne Dienelt

The world held its breath when, on the morning of March 4, 2022, reports became public that Russian military forces had attacked the largest nuclear…

Legal Accountability for Environmental Destruction in Ukraine

Mar 7, 2022 | Rachel Killean

In an open letter published on the 3rd March, the Environmental Peacebuilding Association decried the intentional occupation of nuclear sites, including Chernobyl, and emphasised the risks of military…

Environmental Trends in the Ukraine Conflict, 10 Days in

Mar 5, 2022 | Doug Weir

Russia and Ukraine are major exporters of globally important agricultural commodities and fertiliser. As with oil prices, the invasion is already pushing up the prices…

Climate Finance and the Peace Dividend

Mar 4, 2022 | Catherine Wong

According to the OECD, countries receiving the least climate finance include not only the least developed, but also high-income countries in the Middle East and middle-income…

Review: The Army Climate Strategy and the Climate Security Plan for America

Mar 4, 2022 | Francesco Fmia and Caitlin Werrell

The U.S. Army released its first climate strategy on February 8, the first Service within the Department of Defense (DoD) to do so. This post summarizes and…

The Environmental Dimensions of the Russian Invasion of Ukraine

Mar 4, 2022 | Wilson Center

Today, the Environmental Peacebuilding Association published an open letter, signed by 902 individuals and 156 organizations from more than 75 countries, to express solidarity with the people…

Tethering to Human Rights in the Pushes and Pulls of Human Mobility

Mar 3, 2022 | Jill Baggerman

We live in an era of mobility of ideas, money, and people, said Oli Brown, Associate Fellow at Chatham House. 

According to the World Bank’s Groundswell…

War Escalates Environmental Problems in Ukraine

Mar 3, 2022 | Teresa Bergen

Some Russians are concerned about the environmental effects of the war, too. Oleg Anisimov, head of the Russian delegation at a closed-door U.N. climate conference, apologized for…

Blockchain for Critical Minerals

Mar 3, 2022 | Michael J. Walsh, Jr., Eugenia Wang, and Kathleen E. Wegrzyn

The United States relies heavily on imports to satisfy its demand for critical minerals, and importers rely heavily on China for critical and rare earth…

Explainer: Why Women Need to be at the Heart of Climate Action

Mar 1, 2022

Those who are most affected by climate change today–women, girls and marginalised communities–must be involved in the design and implementation of climate response actions to…

Hydropolitics in the Russian – Ukrainian Conflict

Mar 1, 2022 | Mehmet Altingoz and Saleem Ali

It’s telling that one of the first actions that Russian forces took in their invasion of Ukraine was to blow up a dam on the North Crimean…

The Compounding Crises of the Pandemic, Climate Change, and Ukraine

Mar 1, 2022 | Alexander Verbeek

As Eisenhower could have told you, if you continue to prioritize the urgent above the important, most of your essential tasks will ultimately end in…

A Shift to Clean Energy Would Halt Russia's Petro-Thuggery and More

Feb 28, 2022 | Jonathan Overpeck

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is putting 44 million innocent lives in danger and threatening the sovereignty of a democratically governed country.

Oil and gas prices were…

Dire UN Report Warns of Conflicts Worsened by Climate Change

Feb 28, 2022 | Ja'han Jones

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a body of experts assembled by the U.N. to represent 195 governments, said in its report Monday that “climate change has caused…

Ukraine Invasion: Rapid Overview of Environmental Issues

Feb 25, 2022 | Eoghan Darbyshire

Ukraine is a heavily industrialised country, with many mines, chemical processing plants and metallurgical works, risking a large technological catastrophe. Both the military build-up, and the short…

Climate Security Is Energy Security Is National Security

Feb 25, 2022 | James Murray

There can be no doubt that petrostates feel squeezed by the global agreements to decarbonise and the threat clean technologies pose to the revenue streams…

Bending Gender Norms: Women’s Engagement in Agriculture

Feb 11, 2022 | Manisha Shrestha

Researchers at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) have studied and witnessed that women, particularly in South Asia, have strongly ingrained and culturally…

How Can Climate Finance Work Better for Fragile and Conflict-Affected Regions?

Feb 10, 2022 | Catherine Wong and Yue Cao

Climate change often hits the hardest and is felt most profoundly in fragile and conflict-affected settings, which suffer high vulnerability and low investments in coping…

Environmental Peacebuilding: Science Meets Constructive Resistance

Feb 8, 2022 | Sawssan Abou-Zahr

Four years prior to the October 17th 2019 Revolution, people in Lebanon took to the streets seeking sustainable solutions for the so-called garbage crisis. These…

Why Militaries Shouldn’t Be Exempt from EU Battery Laws

Feb 8, 2022 | Conflict and Environment Observatory

The EU Green Deal and 2050 carbon neutrality targets are set to drive forward a low-carbon economy reliant on battery-powered technology. Both the Green Deal…

Environmental Peacebuilding Is Essential and Complex – but It’s Also Exciting

Feb 4, 2022 | Carl Bruch

Environmental peacebuilding remains a young field but is rapidly evolving. There are still many complexities in the range of issues that it encompasses in dealing…

Why Women’s Leadership is Key to Climate Action

Feb 2, 2022 | Nina Jeffs

At the COP26 climate summit, the leaders of Estonia, Tanzania and Bangladesh were the first to sign the Glasgow Women’s Leadership statement, calling for countries to…

For National Security, Climate Finance Must Be Made 'Conflict-Proof'

Feb 2, 2022 | Elsa Barron and Erin Sikorsky

As the House takes up the America COMPETES Act of 2022, a comprehensive bill to promote innovation and economic competition with China, climate change is…

Why International Geneva’s ‘Human Dimension’ Bodes Well for Environmental Peacebuilding

Feb 2, 2022 | Annika Erickson-Pearson

It’s a compound problem: areas with dwindling natural resources, harsh climate change impacts and biodiversity loss also tend to be those experiencing violent conflict. But…