The Drylands Dividend: The Smart Investment for Powering a Water-Scarce World

Open a can of something fizzy and the reason the sugar doesn’t separate immediately is gum arabic, tapped by hand from acacia trees across the Sahel. Spray on perfume and the reason the scent is still there at dinner is frankincense, a resin cut from Boswellia trees on the dry escarpments of the Horn of Africa. The fat that gives a chocolate bar its snap may well be shea, gathered and pressed by women in the parkland belt of West Africa. The cashmere jumper came from goats that can only be raised on cold, dry rangelands.

Beyond Resilience: Climate Change and the Rights of Char Dwellers in Bangladesh

Bangladesh’s riverine and coastal chars have always been landscapes of movement, but climate change is making that movement more violent, frequent, and unequal. The shifting islands of the Jamuna, Brahmaputra, Padma, and other rivers now reveal how climate stress multiplies deprivation, weakens citizenship, and forces char dwellers to absorb the costs of a crisis they did little to create.

Family Planning and Population Dynamics Are Key to Water Security

This week is World Water Week, the annual conference of governments, business, and civil society on building a water-secure future as global population, climate disruptions, and water demand increase. In Washington, it’s also Water Resources Development Act season, when every two years the US Congress reauthorizes the legilslation that funds US drinking water, wastewater systems, and flood risk management projects.

The Indian Ocean Is Sounding the Alarm and Its Islands Are Among the First to Hear It

Across this vast ocean, the latest monitoring by Mercator Ocean International shows marine heatwave conditions ranging from moderate to severe. At the same time, the World Meteorological Organization expects a strong El Niño to intensify through August to October, with a positive Indian Ocean Dipole also likely to develop. These are not distant scientific signals. They are an urgent warning that the ocean system on which millions depend is under mounting stress.

Beyond the Horizon: Raising a Generation to Protect the Blue Pacific

For generations, Pacific children have grown up with the ocean as part of everyday life. It is where families fish, where stories are passed down, where livelihoods begin and where cultures are rooted.

Grand Planetary Challenges Need a Grand Coalition to Solve Them

Several coalitions exist today to defend the territories in which people live and work. Global leaders have long understood the importance of shared responsibility for collective security and have invested significant time in establishing networks, partnerships and alliances. In 2025, global spending on defense reached a record $2.9 trillion.

GEF Proposes $140 Million Program to Strengthen Drought Resilience

For pastoralists in Arvaikheer — a village in Mongolia’s dry central plains — rain can determine whether there is enough grass for cattle to roam, whether waterholes are replenished and whether families make it through another dry season. But as climate change makes rainfall increasingly unpredictable, even a wet season may no longer provide water and pasture needed to sustain people and livestock.

Malawi Bets on Battery Storage to Climate-Proof Its Fragile Power Grid

For years, Malawi's electricity supply has been at the mercy of droughts, floods and cyclones that have repeatedly exposed the vulnerability of a power system heavily dependent on hydropower.

Resilience Is Not Enough: OCHA Sounds Alarm on Underfunded Humanitarian Crisis in Afghanistan

“Mainly, people tell me they're exhausted. They're exhausted from being poor, from being hungry, from repeated climate shocks, mounting debt, and the daily struggle to provide for their families,” Olga Cherevko, Spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Afghanistan, told UN reporters on August 4.

The Earth Is Burning — And We Are Still Choosing to Let It

I have spent my life on an island. From the granite hills of Mahé, one can watch the sun rise over an ocean that has fed, protected and defined the Seychellois people for centuries.

New Chickpea Variety to Drive Climate Resilience in Africa

New chickpea seed research and production have become the new frontier of climate resilience in southern Africa as farmers battle failing cereal production.

“Kingston’s Disappointment Should Not Extinguish Our Hope for the Deep Ocean”

Earlier this year, I called publicly for a precautionary pause on deep-sea mining, arguing that it is not a rejection of progress, but a commitment to sound science.

Accepting What It Cannot Control, CARICOM Focuses on What It Can

From wars that drive up fuel prices to supply chain disruptions, inflation and increasingly frequent climate disasters, Caribbean leaders say many of the forces shaping the region's future lie beyond their control.

From the Foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro, Magnolia Athletics Camp Is Helping Girls Stay in School, Pursue Athletics and Escape the Pressures of Harmful Traditional Practices

Before sunrise each morning, 19-year-old Josephine Sembeyo joins dozens of teenage runners leaving Magnolia Athletics Camp for training beneath the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro.

Preparing Agriculture for a New Era of Extreme Weather

Recently, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations put out an alert, warning countries around the world about an impending new El Niño  phase that is expected to significantly increase the likelihood of drought, heat waves, storms, and flooding and pose major risks to agriculture across multiple regions.

Extreme Heatwave Escalates Urgency of Climate Adaptation in Europe

As Western Europe endured its worst-ever June heatwave in recorded history, the imperative for climate adaptation is now urgent as the continent accelerates beyond others to become the fastest-warming region in the world.

Where did the Billion Dollar Funding for Rohingya Refugees Go?

Landslides and flooding triggered by heavy monsoon rains swept through the world’s most densely populated concentration of refugee camps this week, killing at least 14 Rohingya refugees, most of them women and girls.

Inside GEF’s Blended Finance Push: Turning Public Money Into Private Capital Leverage

For most of the Eighth Global Environmental Facility (GEF) Assembly last month, the atmosphere inside Samarkand’s sprawling Congress Centre echoed a growing confidence of global environmental policymakers.

Abu Dhabi’s Coral Promise to the Future

In just the first half of this year, Abu Dhabi’s Environment Agency has cultivated 302,415 new coral colonies, bringing the total under the Abu Dhabi Coral Gardens Project to around 1.8 million – a scale of restoration that demands global attention.

Understanding an Interconnected World

When Roberto Savio begins talking about The Global Citizen Handbook, he does not begin with the book itself. He begins with today’s young people.