As a young and promising marine biologist, Camilo Mora led a team of 55 scientists assessing the rapid decline of fish on the world’s coral reefs. It was a global enterprise with broad implications. Hundreds of millions of people rely on reef fish for their primary source of animal protein. Healthy reefs protect coastal communities from devastating storms and provide a multitude of livelihoods, including jobs in the fast-growing tourism industry.

Security, terrorism, conflict, and peace: you won’t find any of these words in the landmark agreement released on December 12 at the 2015 Paris Climate Conference (COP-21). It’s never been front-and-center on the agenda at previous Conference of Parties, from Copenhagen to Cancun. But in Paris, a city reeling from terrorist attacks, the specter of climate-related conflict haunted delegates and the potential of a climate-resilient peace inspired grassroots protests.

As the UNFCCC Conference of the Parties (COP) gets underway in Paris, #resilience appears with increasing frequency on my Twitter feed, and I frequently hear talk about “socio-ecological resilience,” “climate-resilient development,” and “resilience programming.”

More than 80 percent of the estimated 42 million people living in Central Africa’s Lake Victoria Basin depend on fishing or farming for survival. Given this overwhelming reliance on natural resources, the lake’s deteriorating condition – driven by climate change, agriculture, pollution, deforestation, overfishing, and industrialization – has far-reaching implications.

Just a few years ago, progress on global family planning and reproductive health policy seemed to be stuck in a rut. “For 20 years, development money for health had been directed to fight HIV and poverty, and as a result, momentum, interest, and funding for family planning had dwindled,” said Susan Rich, vice president of global partnerships for the Population Reference Bureau (PRB), at the Wilson Center on July 15. “Unmet need for family planning was high all over the world, but especially in Africa.” [Video Below]

Last week, the United Nations concluded one of the last negotiations on the road to adopting the Sustainable Development Goals in September. We’ve entered the home stretch of a process that has taken more than two years, bringing governments, civil society organizations, and communities together to define the development goals and targets that UN member states will be expected to aim for over the next 15 years.

In 2007, the world crossed a threshold:  for the first time in human history, the majority of people lived in urban areas. Today, Africa and Asia are the only remaining continents where the rural population outnumbers urban, but they are urbanizing at unprecedented rates. This rapid growth is a double-edged sword. While urbanization spurs economic opportunity and often increases access to infrastructure, it is also widening disparities in health and development, according to a new data sheet by the Population Reference Bureau.

Two months ago we sat down with some of our community health workers to brainstorm ideas for International Women’s Day. What would engage women, what could bring about positive change in their community? Something different to the normal celebrations, perhaps a petition for a midwife? This seemed like a great idea on paper, but would it create false hope in a village where the public health center has been closed for years?