By comparing “first wave” developing countries, like Sweden and the United States, to “second wave” developers, like South Korea and Japan, Thomas Anderson and Hans-Peter Kohler of the University of Pennsylvania seek to explain why countries that underwent socioeconomic development in the first half of the 20th century have slightly higher fertility levels than those that developed later. Despite “both sets of countries attaining high income and generally low fertility, contemporary gender norms and levels of gender equity differ between them,” write Anderson and Kohler in a new study in Population and Development Review.

Camels pulling wooden carts loaded with coconuts plod down the main road amid speeding motorcycles, buses, rickshaws, and cars. Farmers sit atop slow-moving oxcarts loaded with grasses and other cattle feed. In this region of central Gujarat, India, it appears that rural life has not changed for decades.

In May 2011, two weeks before I was scheduled to start research in the region, a Mongol herder named Mergen was hit by a mining truck while protecting his pastureland in Xilingol, Inner Mongolia. He was dragged 140 feet and killed. His death sparked a month of protests.

The announcement in Washington on September 24 that President Xi Jinping is committing China to a national carbon trading system is the latest step in an important partnership between the two biggest carbon emitters in the world.

The board of the United Nations’ lead organization on trade and development, called UNCTAD, released an assessment of Gaza’s development challenges during their annual meeting in Geneva this month and the news is not good. In 2012, the UN warned that a “herculean” development effort would be to keep pace with Gaza’s rapid population growth. Since then, more fighting with Israel has made things worse, particularly with regard to water and food security. Ninety-five percent of the water from Gaza’s coastal aquifer is unsafe for drinking without treatment, the report says. Contamination and over-extraction may even render it unusable by next year and damage may be irreversible if not addressed in the next five years.

Shenzhen sits in subtropical south China, where four-fifths of the country’s water resources flow. The monsoon brings heavy rains from April to September; at its peak, Shenzhen’s more than 7 million residents see pouring rain almost every day. So why is this city facing a serious water shortage?