Isabel dos Santos, the daughter of Angolan President José Eduardo dos Santos and the richest woman in Africa, owes her wealth to the oil industry. Delfina Fernandes, a woman living in abject poverty in the village of Kibanga, uses gasoline as an anesthetic to dull the sheering pain of her rotting teeth.

Opportunities for research, enterprise, and exploration in the Arctic are expanding as climate change renders the northernmost reaches of the globe more accessible – and visible – than ever before. Often overlooked, however, are the people who actually live there. Four million people make their home in the resource-rich Arctic, where developers and policymakers are staking growing claims. [Video Below]

The World Economic Forum recently named water crisis the world’s number one risk for the next 10 years for its potential impact on people and industry. Indeed, as the global community grapples with climate change – and environmental change of all kinds – understanding the fundamental nature if water to human society is crucial. The input report for this year’s World Water Week, released yesterday by the Stockholm International Water Institute, in fact argues that getting water management right is a prerequisite for sustainable development.

President Obama’s recently announced Clean Power Plan – potentially a major turning point in the fight to contain greenhouse gas emissions and stop the slide toward an ever-warming Earth – is oddly both a courageous step in the right direction and codification of a process already underway.

If you’re a government pondering the development of newly discovered natural resources, how do you avoid the so-called “resource curse” – the tendency of high value extractive resources, like oil, gas, or minerals, to, instead of prosperity, bring corruption, entrenched poverty, and even violence?

Food and water are tied to one another fundamentally. But in addition to their biophysical relationship, human systems intervene, whether through pricing schemes and trade agreements or shifting patterns in consumption and taste.

Although treating wastewater generally ranks alongside police and fire safety, schools, and transit as the top priorities of any sensible city hall, new ideas about cleaning up sewage almost never attract headlines or TV airtime. In its 90-year history, for instance, The New Yorker, the most urbane and expansive magazine in the country, has never published a feature article on sewage treatment.