As part of the 16th Environmental Film Festival in the Nation's Capital, the Wilson Center's Environmental Change and Security Program (ECSP) hosted the Washington, DC premiere of Arid Lands on March 14, 2008. ECSP Program Associate Gib Clarke introduced the film, which offers an intriguing look at the impacts of the Hanford nuclear site on the land and people of the Columbia River basin. Home to two-thirds of the United States' high-level nuclear waste—and the source of the plutonium for the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki—the Hanford site is the focus of the largest environmental cleanup in history.

As part of last year's festival, ECSP hosted a screening and discussion of Maquilapolis: City of Factories, which spotlighted the struggles of women working in sweatshops in Tijuana, Mexico.