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.

In my tiny, half-an-island country of Timor-Leste, cemeteries smell of jasmine and come to life on All Saints’ Day. Families have picnics and kids roam wild over the tombstones. Here, stepping on somebody else’s family tombstones is not seen as an offense but as the norm; after all, since there isn’t enough land to hold so many graves, not stepping on one is impossible unless you have mastered levitation.

“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.

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.

As Saddam Hussein drained Iraq’s famed marshes to punish the rebellious tribesmen who lived in them, Amjad Mohamed packed his few possessions, grabbed his fishing rod, and fled south to Basra with his extended family.

As momentum builds towards the negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals and UN climate change summit later this year, the G7 countries – France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Canada, the UK, and the United States – have made a strong statement about the importance of climate security risks. A New Climate for Peace: Taking Action on Climate and Fragility Risks, an independent report commissioned by G7 foreign ministers and authored by a consortium of international organizations including the Wilson Center, analyzes the security and stability risks posed by climate change and offers concrete policy options for addressing them. [Video Below]

Earth’s thin upper-crust of soil is kept in balance by a complex carbon and nutrient cycle that is increasingly threatened by human exploitation and climate change, according to a review in Science. The chemicals trapped in topsoil and subsoil are crucial to plant growth, but are being depleted at rates much higher than they are being replenished, writes Ronald Amundson et al. For instance in the central United States, estimated soil erosion rates exceed production rates by 10 times.

“Tackling climate change could be the greatest global health opportunity of the 21^st century,” asserts the newest report by the Lancet Commission on Health and Climate Change.