The past decade has brought ground-shaking changes to global energy markets. The unconventional fuel boom has unexpectedly reduced U.S. dependence on oil imports, while in the Asia-Pacific region, energy-constrained nations are increasingly reliant on foreign sources to meet their soaring demand. With the U.S. slated to export liquid natural gas (LNG) to Asia as early as 2017, a new energy era has come.

This year’s World Water Day is taking on a broader theme than years past: sustainable development. The theme makes sense as two major international processes – the drafting of the Sustainable Development Goals to replace the Millennium Development Goals, and the most anticipated UN Climate Summit in years – are taking place in 2015. Decisions made over the next nine months will play a huge role in relationships between nations and global development priorities going forward.

Climate change negotiations seem to crawl along interminably at the pace of the glaciers they are meant to protect, with little perceptible progress as meeting follows meeting and conference follows lackluster conference. But this year we are seeing remarkable momentum building toward a historic conference in Paris in the closing days of 2015, by the end of which we will either have a new international agreement on cutting greenhouse gas emissions, or we will have seen the last of truly global efforts to strike a deal on saving our planet.

India is one of the most water-challenged countries in the world, from its deepest aquifers to its largest rivers. Groundwater levels are falling as farmers, new urban residents, and industries drain wells and aquifers. What water is available is often severely polluted, and the future may only be worse, with the national supply predicted to fall 50 percent below demand by 2030.

With the Obama Administration moving forward on emissions reductions, the deadline for drafting the Sustainable Development Agenda, and a highly anticipated global climate summit in Paris, 2015 promises to be a crucial year for climate policy. “In many ways, last year was the year of building momentum, and this is the year of getting the work done,” said Lisa Friedman, deputy editor of ClimateWire, at the Wilson Center on January 5. [Video Below]

Stepping away from herds of cattle, subsistence farms, and other responsibilities at home, roughly a hundred Kenyan villagers traveled overnight by bus from the Tana River Delta to Nairobi in February 2011 for a hearing at the national high court. The claimants declared that the lack of a “comprehensive land use master plan” infringed on the rights of the region’s people, and called for the prohibition of further land and resource development until such a plan was negotiated.