In the late 1990s, world leaders came together to create the Millennium Development Goals – time-bound, quantified targets for addressing extreme poverty and human health and well-being. Notable among them was to “halve, by 2015, the proportion of the population without sustainable access to water and sanitation.”

Today, as El Niño-related droughts impact communities across East and Southern Africa, food aid shipment and distribution networks have shifted into high gear. From the U.S. Agency for International Development to the United Nations World Food Program and NGOs like CARE and Save the Children, food aid providers are stocking port warehouses in Djibouti and South Africa, as well as inland warehouses in countries like Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, and Lesotho.

Between 1961 and the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, Iraqi Kurdistan’s quest for independence has led to the violent death of an estimated 180,000 people. At least 12 independent political groups represent the Kurdish minority in the north of the country. These groups have pursued wildly different strategies to reach their goals, some orchestrating terrorist attacks or larger-scale violence, others choosing education and propaganda campaigns, the provision of social services to gain popular support, and demonstrations.

In 1970, Cyclone Bhola slammed into East Pakistan – present day Bangladesh – with sustained winds of 150 miles per hour, killing as many as half a million people. In 2007, Cyclone Sidr killed 3,406 people in Bangladesh. This year, Cyclone Roanu killed just 30. What’s behind this huge decline in mortality? What has Bangladesh done differently?

Resilience is increasingly recognized as a powerful concept to help practitioners, academics, and policymakers better understand how people respond to shocks and stressors, and how those responses can be linked to longer-term positive or negative development outcomes, such as wellbeing or food (in)security.

Last month, the world came to Copenhagen to focus on how to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for girls and women. The Women Deliver Conference, the largest gathering on girls’ and women’s health and rights in the last decade, was a huge success. Convening over 5,700 likeminded people from 169 countries was important to reenergize the movement and inspire action. Preaching to the converted is sometimes important. But now it’s time to focus on those who are not yet converted.

As early as 1911, coal miners in Britain carried caged canaries into mining pits. Any sign of distress from the small birds, which are incredibly sensitive to the presence of harmful gases such as carbon monoxide, meant immediate evacuation. Today’s canaries in the coal mine are low-income, minority communities whose exposure to environmental risks in the United States and elsewhere puts them at the frontlines of the global climate crisis.

Anyone visiting Singapore, as I did recently, quickly realizes it is exceptional. A tiny, rich, stable city-state of nearly 6 million people perched uneasily in a region of sprawling mega-countries full of poverty and instability, it also a thriving free market trading and financial center that is meticulously planned and where 80 percent of people live in public housing.