Around the world, urbanization and climate change are transforming societies and environments, and the stakes could not be higher for the poor and marginalized. The 2015 UN climate conference in Paris (COP-21) highlighted the need for coordinated action to address the profound injustice of the world’s most disadvantaged people bearing the greatest costs of climate impacts. Among those at the COP were mayors from around the world advocating for the important role of cities in these efforts.

The government of El Salvador took a truly extraordinary step in an attempt to control the rapidly spreading Zika virus last week by asking its citizens to avoid getting pregnant from now until 2018. Yes, you read that right.

Myanmar is undergoing multiple transitions, from military rule to democracy, decades of civil war to peace, and from a command economy to a market-based one. No less of an important challenge amidst this backdrop of change and hope is addressing the country’s energy poverty.

Venezuela seems suspended at a critical juncture. Following national elections in December, the opposition Democratic Unity Roundtable was set to occupy two thirds of the 167-seat National Assembly, an upset that would reduce the late Hugo Chávez’s United Socialist Party to a distant second place for the first time and given opposition legislators the power to enact sweeping political changes.

An article in the Annual Review of Sociology reviews much of the research on the relationship between environmental factors and migration, providing a timely overview of a complex field. “Migration is often a household strategy to diversify risk,” write Lori Hunter et al., but can be influenced by any number of determinants, including at the macro level (e.g., environmental, social, cultural, economic, and political dynamics), the meso level (e.g., intervening obstacles and facilitators), as well as the micro level (e.g., personal and household characteristics).

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.