Last week, the United Nations concluded one of the last negotiations on the road to adopting the Sustainable Development Goals in September. We’ve entered the home stretch of a process that has taken more than two years, bringing governments, civil society organizations, and communities together to define the development goals and targets that UN member states will be expected to aim for over the next 15 years.

In most parts of the world, population growth is stagnant, even declining slightly, part of a decades-long and nearly universal shift towards smaller, healthier families. But the places where growth is still rapid continue to defy expectations about when they will “catch up.”

Earlier this month, the United Nations released a final report on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the framework that has guided global development efforts for the last 15 years. The document examines each of the eight MDGs and finds that “despite many successes, the poorest and most vulnerable people are being left behind.” As one of the first global poverty reduction movements nears its end, the report calls for better data collection practices to create a post-2015 development agenda that can overcome the MDG’s shortcomings.

In 2007, the world crossed a threshold:  for the first time in human history, the majority of people lived in urban areas. Today, Africa and Asia are the only remaining continents where the rural population outnumbers urban, but they are urbanizing at unprecedented rates. This rapid growth is a double-edged sword. While urbanization spurs economic opportunity and often increases access to infrastructure, it is also widening disparities in health and development, according to a new data sheet by the Population Reference Bureau.

“With current neglect of family planning, the UN’s recent projection of a 2100 world population of up to 12.3 billion is a possibility,” says a report from the University of California, San Francisco’s Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health. Increased voluntary family planning efforts are needed, the authors contend, to meet existing demand for contraceptives, stabilize the threat of global food insecurity, and reduce carbon emissions that contribute to climate change.

Since President Lyndon B. Johnson created the USAID population program in 1965, it has evolved in tandem with the global discourse on population and demography. “The agency’s family planning program is as relevant today as it ever was, and is necessary,” said Jennifer Adams, deputy assistant administrator of the U.S. Agency of International Development’s Bureau for Global Health. The bureau houses the Office of Population and Reproductive Health, which implements U.S. development and relief efforts to expand access to modern contraceptives, fight HIV/AIDS, reduce unsafe abortions, and protect the health of women and children. [Video Below]

Iran is poised to reap a vast “demographic dividend” if the appropriate national and international policies are adopted, including a nuclear deal with the P5+1 (five permanent members of the UN Security Council, plus Germany).

Pope Francis sparked worldwide discussion and jubilation among many green advocates after releasing Laudato Si, the first Papal encyclical to focus directly on the environment. The pontiff touched on everything from pollution and sustainable development, to anthropogenic climate change and water security in his 180-page missive.