The disastrous flooding in the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand this summer, which claimed more than 6,000 lives, was the outcome of a changing climate and poorly planned development. It was also another case in point of the increasing importance of environmental security in India – especially for the military.

The black, blasted landscape of Wuhai City sometimes looks more like the moon than Inner Mongolia. But this scene is becoming all too common across much of Northern China. China’s massive coal industry is not only polluting the air and water, but also fundamentally altering the surrounding landscape and communities.

To use the military parlance, climate change is often considered a “threat multiplier,” challenging stability and development around the world by exacerbating underlying conditions of vulnerability. South Asia is one region that faces multiple stressors that have the potential to feedback off each other.

Higher temperatures, more extreme weather, rising sea levels, flooding, and increased cyclonic activity in the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea are reshaping the environment, warns the Center for American Progress (CAP) in a report.

The demographic dividend – the idea that a decline from high to low rates of population growth can lead to dramatic economic gains – has become something of a buzzword in development circles. Sub-Saharan Africa holds the single largest block of remaining high fertility countries and while headlines tend towards the dramatic about demographic shifts there, less column space has been devoted to examining the underlying issues causing these shifts or the other changes that will be necessary for countries to benefit from them.

The original version of this article appeared on The Economist’s Babbage blog.

Earth’s climate is changing, whether you like it or not. As it does, other changes – like rising sea levels or falling crop yields – follow. It is easy to see how this might lead to conflict. Competition for ever scarcer resources such as arable land and its bounty can turn ugly. As the price of food rises the poor, who spend more of their income on it, are hit more than the rich, exacerbating income inequality and leading to disaffection, resentment and, possibly, violence.

In a recent post on the new United Nations population projections, I discussed the risk in assuming that countries in sub-Saharan Africa will progress through the demographic transition at a pace similar to other regions. Making this assumption is questionable because fertility decline in Africa has generally proceeded more slowly than in other parts of the world, with several cases of “stalls” and even small fertility increases over time.