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By: Anneka Williams Time and again we’ve seen political probity take a nosedive as incumbents pander to audiences with vastly different environmental value systems inContinue readingBorgen: Power & Glory is a great excuse to talk about energy security, climate change, and Arctic geopolitics

By: Anneka Williams As I run through the town of Bethel, Alaska I find myself navigating collapsed sections of roads, overgrown willow trees encroaching fromContinue readingOn the Front Lines of Climate Change: Loss and Damage in Alaska, USA

Action on climate change could be a way to move beyond humanitarian aid and start building the food and water security Afghanistan so desperately needs.Continue readingClimate change must become part of the global agenda on Afghanistan

Somalia is emblematic of the wider situation around the world whereby climate change is having cascading impacts that reach far beyond borders. For more thanContinue readingOn the front line of climate change, Somalia needs help

Sand from fragile rivers, beaches, and the sea floor is being mined to meet the vast demand for construction materials, resulting in major environment andContinue readingWhy managing sand sustainably is a gritty problem

In 1965, 29-year-old Dang Hong Nhut was visiting her husband in the Chu Chi region of Vietnam when the planes came. ‘After they had gone,Continue readingThe Science of Destruction

Lake Chad is a hydrological miracle – a life-giving, freshwater lake in the Sahara desert. But the region around the lake has been engulfed inContinue readingLake Chad shrinking? It’s a story that masks serious failures of governance

Today (Tuesday 17th September) the UN Security Council will debate the renewal of the mandate for UNAMA—the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan—a twice-yearly event thatContinue readingClimate Security in Afghanistan: Should it even be on the radar?

Mediation – the process of helping groups in, or at risk of, armed conflict settle their differences peacefully – rarely gets the attention it deservesContinue readingHeating up: mediation and climate change

Sand is a critical ingredient for many of the materials that we take for granted: concrete, glass and asphalt. Sand and coarse aggregates form the backboneContinue readingDriven to Extraction: Can Sand Mining be Sustainable?

Avoiding the worst impacts of climate change requires a better understanding of what those may be and impartial ways to track them. [This piece firstContinue readingBetter the Devil You Know: The Importance of Measuring Climate Risk

I miss 2015. It was a landmark year. In the space of 12 short months governments signed a slew of groundbreaking agreements: the Sustainable DevelopmentContinue readingStopping the Great Splintering: A 5-Step Plan to Revive Multilateralism

In late February, Donald Trump announced Kelly Knight Craft, a 57-year-old Kentucky native, as his pick to succeed Nikki Haley as US Ambassador to theContinue readingCraft and the Council: Will Kelly Knight Craft end climate action at the UN Security Council?

They came for Niloufar more than a year ago. On 24th and 25th January 2018, Niloufar Bayani, a former colleague of mine at UN Environment,Continue readingWho defends the defenders?

Britain once ruled the waves, but, for the moment, its dominion is confined to the airwaves. With Theresa May’s tweaked deal ruled out for aContinue readingFool Britannia: Britain’s position in the world after Brexit

As I write, delegates are starting to arrive in Nairobi for the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA). The Assembly starts in earnest on Monday 11thContinue readingUNEA: The most important environmental meeting that most people have never heard of

With climate change increasingly being seen as a security issue, there is a question about what role the United Nations Security Council could and shouldContinue readingPodcast: The Security Council’s role in addressing climate-related security risks

Stick with me here, but I’m going to try to argue that for those working in international development, bureaucracy is something to lean into, ratherContinue readingIn praise of small ‘b’ bureaucracy

Make no mistake, when Erik Solheim resigned as head of UN Environment on 20th November 2018, less than two and a half years into whatContinue readingErik Solheim: what he got right, what he got wrong, and what the new UN Environment chief should do next

In 2018, a staggering 141 million people across the world required humanitarian assistance. With the need for aid far outstripping available resources, it is noContinue readingAre humanitarians going green?

The collapse of the Brumadinho mine tailings dam in Minas Gerais state in Brazil on 25th January was a triple tragedy. First, of course, isContinue readingThe Brumadinho mine tailing collapse: an avoidable disaster