An increasing number of conservation and health activists are beginning to understand the value of an integrated approach to development. Without addressing the needs of people, conservation measures will not be very effective, and conversely, without conservation, people lose vital natural resources and suffer consequences to their health.

A study published in PNAS highlights the unpredictability of the impacts of climate change on water resources by comparing detailed simulations in mountain areas of Chile and Nepal. Authors Silvan Ragettli, Walter W. Immerzeel, and Francesca Pellicciotti study the response of river flows to a significant decline in glacier areas in the Juncal catchment of Chile and the Langtang catchment of Nepal at higher spatiotemporal resolutions than any previous study.

Although separated by a thousand miles, the women of the Malaysian state of Sarawak and the Filipino island of Mindoro are united by a major struggle: climate change. As rainfall patterns grow increasingly unpredictable, natural disasters become more frequent, and drought ravages once-arable land, women are on the frontlines in both communities.

Southeast Asia is one of the fastest growing energy markets in the world. Regional demand for energy may grow by as much as 80 percent and electricity demand more than triple by 2040. To keep up, governments are working to expand coordination across borders and create a broader regional energy grid (indeed their efforts predate their northern neighbors’ recent announcement of a “supergrid” by several decades).

The first baby conceived through in vitro fertilization (IVF) was born in 1978 and revolutionized alternative family building strategies. As IVF has become more widely available in the years since, the focus of many families who cannot conceive or carry a baby to term – the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates there are 6.7 million such women in the United States alone – has shifted from adoption to surrogacy. However, this endeavor remains very expensive; prohibitively so for many. Commercial surrogacy can cost up to $70,000 in the United States, except in the seven states where it is illegal. Yet if couples are willing to outsource to another country, surrogacy can cost much less.

In 2007, a teenaged Australian became the first documented case of “climate delusion” when he was hospitalized for dehydration after refusing to drink out of fear of contributing to the nation’s drought. Carley Chavara’s story on “climate trauma” was the most-read last month after being linked to by NPR.

When wildfires become unstoppable, consuming forests, farmlands, communities, and anything else in their path, how will those affected cope? When typhoons slam coastal populations, dumping over a foot of rain in a single event, who will be there to help mop up? When seas rise up, drowning centuries-old communities, where will the displaced go?

Rivers have shaped the Western Balkan Peninsula’s characteristic landscape and played an important role in its history. Following the violence of the Yugoslav secession wars in the 1990s and the creation of six new nations, the number of transboundary river basins doubled from 6 to 13. In Kosovo, where independence remains a question, the water sector is a microcosm of tensions between ethnic Serbs and Albanians. The challenge of water resource management exists not only over the province’s contested national boundaries with Serbia, but between divided ethnic groups within the territory.