Katherine Waters

Katherine Waters is a senior program assistant for the climate, environment and conflict team at USIP.

Prior to her role at USIP, she served as a program analyst with the Institute for Climate and Peace, where she completed research at the nexus of climate, security and peacebuilding in the Asia-Pacific region. She has also interned for the Environmental Protection Agency and is a member of the Community of Practice on Environment, Climate, Conflict, and Peace. She is particularly interested in international climate governance and the role of youth at the intersection of climate, conflict and peacebuilding.

Waters graduated from Middlebury College in 2023 with a bachelor’s in international and global studies and a concentration in global security. Her undergraduate work centered on studying climate security, climate justice and policymaking at the local, national and international level.

Publications By Katherine

The Outlook for COP28: Fighting, Fighting Everywhere, with Progress on the Line

Wednesday, November 29, 2023

By: Tegan Blaine, Ph.D. ; Katherine Waters

The 2023 U.N. Climate Change Conference of Parties (COP28) risks becoming two December weeks of negotiations in Dubai rife with visible conflicts: With the chair of COP28 perceived by many as having conflicts of interest with the oil and gas industry, a newly released Global Stocktake report highlights how far global action is from achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement.

Type: Analysis

Environment; Global Policy

Pacific Island Nations Seek Climate Solutions Outside of COP28

Tuesday, November 28, 2023

By: Kayly Ober ; Katherine Waters

While the Pacific Islands are responsible for less than 1 percent of total global greenhouse gas emissions, they face disproportionate impacts from climate change. These impacts are wide ranging: rising sea levels, salinization and dwindling availability of fresh water, increasing and more intense tropical storms, floods, drought, ocean acidification and coral reef bleaching. Already, NASA finds that sea level rise in Tuvalu is 1.5 times faster than the global average — and is expected to more than double by 2100.