“The idea that there’s an information deficit – that if you fill it, it’ll change the world – is fantasy,” says Andrew Revkin in an interview at the Wilson Center.

The original version of this article, by Chris Berdnik, appeared on the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

I meet Keo Mao, 42, in the floating fishing village of Akol on Cambodia’s Lake Tonle Sap. The houses here move seasonally with the lake, which expands by a factor of five during the monsoon rains and recedes again in the dry months. Fish supply about 80 percent of the animal protein eaten by Cambodians, and about 60 percent of the inland catch comes from the Tonle Sap.

Against the stunning backdrop of Marojejy National Park, I recently crossed paths with a conservationist from a very different background, working on the opposite side of Madagascar. But, it turns out, the communities we work with face many of the same challenges, and our meeting spawned a new population, health, and environment (PHE) program.

In the sleepy northern Thai border town of Huay Luk, a community leader, Pornsawan Boontun, still remembers the day when villagers netted a Mekong giant catfish more than a decade ago. The fish weighed 615 pounds, and it surprised everyone since the elusive species has never been common in this stretch of river.

Nearly every local story has a global context. This is especially true when it comes to the environment, and there may be no better way to show that context than through visualization. But in developing countries, where so many important changes are happening, journalists often lack the resources or skills to make data visualization a part of their repertoire.

“The rate of speed of change in the global oceans are greater than [that] of any time in known history,” said Karen Sack of the Pew Charitable Trusts, speaking at the Wilson Center on November 13. She was joined by Paul Schopf, professor of oceanography and associate dean for research and computing at George Mason University, and Libby Jewett, director of the Ocean Acidification Programs at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), to discuss the latest State of the Ocean Report. [Video Below]

Next year, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), adopted by the United Nations after the Millennium Declaration, are set to expire. As they wind down, the global development community is taking stock. While there have been great strides toward accomplishing many of the goals set forth in 2000, there has been little headway in ensuring environmental sustainability, said Melinda Kimble, senior vice president of the United Nations Foundation. Which raises the question: What should change for the next set of global development goals, which are supposed to be even more environmentally focused – the “Sustainable Development Goals?”

Six years after beginning a marine conservation program focused on octopus fishery management in southwest Madagascar, “we can proudly say that we have made a real impact as an organization providing health care,” said Dr. Vik Mohan, medical director of Blue Ventures and a practicing doctor in the United Kingdom.