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The mosquito story isn't just about insects. It’s about climate change, globalisation, migration, disease, transport and the way humans are changing the planet.

So, today, we're asking a big geographical question:

What happens when the map of where mosquitoes can survive starts to change?

Why are mosquitoes so dangerous?

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When people hear the term food security, they often think about whether enough food is being produced.

Production certainly matters — but modern food systems are much more complicated than that.

A farmer needs:

Energy → fertiliser → seeds → machinery → transport → finance → markets

A disruption to any one of these can affect the final price or availability of food.

This means food security is influenced by factors far beyond the farm itself. The article identifies energy, fertiliser, logistics, finance and geopolitics as increasingly important parts of the food system.

This is an example of systems thinking.

Instead of studying agriculture as an isolated activity, geographers ask:

What other systems does agriculture depend upon?

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Uganda: A Migration Superpower You Don’t Expect
When people think about major migration destinations, they usually imagine places like Europe or the United States.
But here’s the twist: Uganda hosts one of the largest refugee populations on Earth — over a million people.

Most refugees come from neighbouring countries facing conflict or instability:

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Migration is the movement of people from one place to another. It can be voluntary, such as moving to find work or education, or forced, when people have little choice because of conflict, persecution or disasters.

Uganda is an important case study because it is both a destination and a transit country for migrants. It also hosts a very large refugee population.

Its location is important. Uganda is surrounded by countries including South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Rwanda, Tanzania and Kenya. Several of these countries have experienced conflict and political instability, creating migration flows across Uganda’s borders.

This means Uganda provides a useful example of how physical location, political conditions, economic opportunities and environmental pressures can combine to shape migration.

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A magnitude 7.8 earthquake that struck southern Mindanao in the Philippines.
It’s a powerful example of how physical geography, human geography, and hazard science all connect — and why understanding earthquakes is way more than memorising plate boundaries.

Let’s break down what happened, why it happened, and what it teaches us.

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The Philippines lies between several moving tectonic plates, which makes earthquakes very common. To the east, the Philippine Sea Plate is subducting, or sinking, beneath the islands. To the west, other plates and marginal seas are also pushing and sliding in complicated ways. On top of that, the country is cut by the Philippine Fault, a major strike-slip fault that helps absorb the stress.

This means the region is under constant pressure. When rocks suddenly slip or break, energy is released as an earthquake. That is why the Philippines experiences so many strong quakes compared with many other parts of the world.

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Cascading Disasters

1. Hazard

Examples: conflict, drought, flooding, or disruption to shipping.
Icon: lightning bolt or explosion symbol over a globe.
Caption: A sudden or ongoing event that threatens people or systems.

2. Exposure

Icon: map with people, roads, and buildings inside the affected zone.
Caption: People, infrastructure, and businesses are located in the hazard area.

3. Vulnerability

Icon: cracked bridge, weak house, and empty wallet.
Caption: Poverty, damaged infrastructure, and weak services reduce coping ability.

4. Impact

Icon: arrows showing displacement, hunger, and economic loss.
Caption: Lives disrupted — hunger, loss of income, and broken trade links.

5. Response

Icon: aid truck, handshake, and rebuilding crane.
Caption: Humanitarian aid, diplomacy, military action, and reconstruction efforts.

6. Feedback

Icon: circular arrow looping back to “Vulnerability.”
Caption: If the response fails, vulnerability increases — restarting the cycle.

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Bangkok is sinking. So are Jakarta, New Orleans, Manila, Ho Chi Minh City, and dozens of other delta metropolises around the world. Thai landscape architect Kotchakorn Voraakhom likes to joke that her version of a climate-change photo isn’t a melting glacier — it’s a crocodile swimming down a flooded Bangkok street. The joke points to something deadly serious: a city of 15 million people, built on a soft river delta, is losing its fight against water. Voraakhom has spent the last decade turning that fight into her life’s work, and her career offers something rarer than a warning about climate change — a working demonstration of what a real solution looks like, built one park at a time. Drawing on her design philosophy and projects, along with current research and comparable efforts from around the world, this article explains why her approach — reintroducing absorbent, “amphibious” landscape into dense cities — is quickly becoming one of the most credible strategies available for surviving a wetter, hotter century.

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