Norway's Snøhvit, or Snow White, is the northernmost natural gas facility in the world—and some oil companies' model for the future of the Arctic.

A Canadian soldier stands guard at the edge of the Northwest Passage, an emerging shipping lane as the Arctic melts. 

As Greenland’s glaciers recede, revealing mineral deposits, mines like Black Angel are expected to help fund its push for independence from Denmark. 

That guy at the bottom right of the photo? He was using climate change as a pick-up line.

Fjords in Greenland are melting earlier and freezing later, extending the season for shipping and icebergs. 

Betting on future mineral wealth as the ice recedes, Greenlanders voted 75.5 percent in favor of greater independence from Denmark in a 2008 referendum.

On the hunt for potable water, Israeli desalination engineers invented the world’s greatest snowmaker, a product now in use in the melting Alps. 

During a historic drought in Southern California, the All-American Canal was reengineered in order to get more water to San Diego, less to Mexico.

As food prices spiked, the hedge fund manager Phil Heilberg (right) cut a deal with Gabriel Matip, the son of a feared South Sudanese general, for millions of acres of farmland. 

A forester waters seedlings that will become part of Africa’s 4,700-mile Great Green Wall, an attempt to block the expanding Sahara.

Volunteers march in celebration after the first he first full season of planting trees for Senegal's portion of the Great Green Wall.

Dhaka, Bangladesh grows by half a million people a year as migrants flee cyclones and rising seas. 

Boatmen await passengers on Dhaka's flood-prone Buriganga River.

The world's longest border fence is being built around Bangladesh to keep migrants at bay.

The Netherlands, protected from storm surges by massive barriers like the Maeslant, pictured here, is selling its flood-fighting expertise to a worried world.

In Key West, officials plan to release clouds of genetically modified mosquitoes to combat resurgent dengue fever, a disease expected to spread as temperatures rise.