According to a recent poll, young people are deeply concerned about the world they will inherit, want to be more engaged in meeting the development needs of their communities, and are helping to lead democracy or social justice protests in their countries. At the same time, new research shows a large decline in trust and admiration for democratic governance. According to Freedom House, for the first time in decades, authoritarian leaning regimes outnumber democratic leaning ones, with a majority of the world’s population now living in authoritarian leaning countries.

“Climate change is an increasingly destabilizing force—an accelerating destabilization force—and it’s impacting our operational environment, it’s creating new missions, and our allies and partners are going to be called to respond to these increased demands,” said Brigadier General Rebecca Sonkiss, Deputy Director for Counter Threats and International Cooperation at the Joint Staff J5, at a recent event hosted by the Wilson Center and the Center for Climate and Security. At the event, senior U.S. Government officials reflected on the significance of the Biden administration’s new climate security reports and how climate security is being prioritized and coordinated across defense and development, providing insight into the administration’s whole-of-government approach.

“In international relations today, we face two truly existential threats—in climate change and in nuclear war,” says Robert Litwak, Senior Vice President for Scholars and Director of International Security Studies, in a new episode of Wilson NOW. The interview with Litwak focuses on his new article, “Geostrategic Competition and Climate Change: Avoiding the Unmanageable,” recently published in 21^st Century Diplomacy: Foreign Policy is Climate Policy. 

In 2007, at the (U.S.) National Intelligence Council, a colleague and I set out to determine if we could forecast two distinct political phenomena, the rise and the demise of high levels of democracy. To guide our decade-long forecasts, we relied on a simple statistical model and a spreadsheet of demographic projections from the UN’s 2006 World Population Prospects data set. Now that the experimental period (from 2010 to 2020) has ended, we can look back and ask: How well did these forecasts perform? 

“There is little doubt that tens of millions of people will be displaced over the next two to three decades due in large measure by disaster and other environmental changes affected by climate, with the majority displaced within the borders of their own countries. The United States has a special responsibility to lead on issues of climate change, migration, and displacement,” said Eric Schwartz, President of Refugees International, at a recent event presenting a Blue-Ribbon Task Force report on climate change and migration.

In our top post for June, Steve Gale shares 5 consequences out of the National Intelligence Council’s recently released Global Trends report that development actors should be particularly attuned to. In addition to the “long tail” of the COVID-19 pandemic, the report recognizes the environmental consequences of climate change, including unprecedented numbers of wildfires, increased intensity of tropical storms, and sea-level rise. As a result, migration will be more pronounced and require more targeted aid approaches as demographics shift.

How should the international community support the stabilization of Afghanistan after U.S. and NATO troops withdraw? Answers from President Biden, high ranking U.S. administration officials, and lawmakers have focused on funding the Afghan military and police and remotely retaining U.S. lethal capacity. Development aid is mentioned only in the vaguest of terms. But as withdrawal plans solidify, peace and resilience against insurgencies urgently require the administration to shift the focus to development and include support for local environmental governance. Looking at how crucial forests are to Afghanistan’s local economy and governance systems, we sketch the resource-conflict links and propose possibilities for local, environmental governance that the international community could support to quell insurgency and build the political, economic, and environmental foundations for peace in the country.