The BALANCED initiative in Tanzania’s Saadani National Park, “the only terrestrial park in the country with a contiguous marine area,” released the results of a 2012 progress survey on its efforts to create community champions for sustainable natural resource management and family planning awareness. Compared to the last survey in 2009, they found increased family planning awareness, higher contraceptive distribution and usage, and improved discussion and acceptance of contraceptive use from male partners. BALANCED-trained community-based distributors provided contraception to “31 percent of all pill users and 21 percent of all condom users.” Survey results also show a greater community awareness of the impact of individual and collective actions on the surrounding biosphere. The report calls for the continued training of community-based distributors and PHE “champions,” along with outreach to the private sector in order to ensure training and distribution can continue without the permanent presence of the BALANCED Project.

More than 20 percent of the world’s population live in ecological hotspots, places rich in biodiversity but often lacking basic government services. Population, health, and environment – or PHE – programs address compounding stresses in these areas by helping to meet people’s needs for basic health services, including reproductive health care; promoting food security and poverty reduction; and teaching sustainable natural resource management. [Video Below]

For a country that once made headlines for famine, poverty, and war, Ethiopia is gaining a reputation as a development leader on the African continent. In just over 10 years, the country has slashed child mortality rates by half, rising in global rank from 146 in 2000 to 68 in 2012. More money is being spent on health care, poverty levels and fertility rates are down, and twice as many children are in school.

In August, Solomon Hsiang, Marshall Burke, and Edward Miguel published a provocative piece in Science in which they sought to demonstrate a correlation between climate extremes and violence across a range of time periods, countries, and different levels of conflict. It’s a massive undertaking and one that predictably has evoked some criticism – some of it warranted.

The original version of this article, by Susan Moran, appeared on Ensia.

Lean and towering at 6 feet 5 inches, Ken Giller blends right into the rows of climbing beanstalks he is examining on this blisteringly hot spring day in Buhoro, a village in northern Rwanda. Local farmers who have been growing various varieties of beans bred for high yields and other desirable traits proudly show him their plots on the terraced hillside.

Population aging and decline are frequently described as a threat to countries’ economic development and social stability. Evocative language, such as “demographic winter” and “graying of the great powers,” portrays the serious consequences that many observers envision as fertility and growth rates decline and the elderly comprise a greater percentage of the population. These concerns reach around the globe, including in Africa, which has the lowest percentage of elderly among the world’s major regions.