When it comes to environmental change, “policies and laws can have a very productive contribution toward positive adaptation, or they can subvert that and constrain options,” says Jon Unruh, associate professor of human geography and international development at McGill University, in this week’s podcast.

“There is more to education than the picture that you typically see in most reports,” says Parfait Eloundou-Enyegue, professor of development sociology at Cornell University, in this week’s podcast. “And this picture comes from looking at education not as an outcome but as an institution.”

“It has always surprised me actually how powerful this ‘demographic dividend’ framework seems to be,” says Ellen Starbird, director of USAID’s Office of Population and Reproductive Health, in this week’s podcast. But “for a lot of countries it’s a long way off.”

“The good news is clean energy has gotten much cheaper,” says Ethan Zindler, head of the Americas for Bloomberg New Energy Finance, on this week’s podcast. “The amount of stuff getting built for the same number of dollars has been going up. You’re getting more ‘bang for your buck’ when it comes to actual deployment.”

“In my view, we are 40 years into a 100-year transition to a clean energy economy,” says Mike Eckhart, global head of environmental finance and sustainability at Citigroup, in this week’s podcast. “We’re in the mainstream of building an industry.”

“The demographic dividend is about inclusive growth, not just economic growth,” says Jagdish Upadhyay, chief of commodity security at the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), in this week’s podcast. “If it’s not inclusive, achieving the demographic dividend will be difficult.”