Growing awareness of the connected challenges of natural resource management, economic growth, and human health has encouraged more integrated models of international development. The experience of two organizations – TRY Oyster Women’s Association, based in The Gambia, and Blue Ventures, based in Madagascar – demonstrates the success of a community-based approach to building resilience, enabling communities to bounce back from adversity and establish a long-term basis for development. [Video Below]

The original version of this article, by Codi Yeager-Kozacek, appeared on Circle of Blue.

Developing countries will account for much of the world’s growth in agricultural production, demand, and trade during the next decade, as production growth in developed countries slows, according to reports from leading food policy organizations. The shift will pose challenges for the quality and abundance of water supplies in regions like South America, Asia, and Africa.

“Climate change is one of the greatest challenges that we are facing in today’s world; it is particularly important for us in the Caribbean and for a country like Trinidad and Tobago,” says ECSP Director and Trinidad-native Roger-Mark De Souza in an upcoming documentary by Sustain T&T, a non-profit based in the islands.

To use the military parlance, climate change is often considered a “threat multiplier,” challenging stability and development around the world by exacerbating underlying conditions of vulnerability. South Asia is one region that faces multiple stressors that have the potential to feedback off each other.

Higher temperatures, more extreme weather, rising sea levels, flooding, and increased cyclonic activity in the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea are reshaping the environment, warns the Center for American Progress (CAP) in a report.

The original version of this article appeared on The Economist’s Babbage blog.

Earth’s climate is changing, whether you like it or not. As it does, other changes – like rising sea levels or falling crop yields – follow. It is easy to see how this might lead to conflict. Competition for ever scarcer resources such as arable land and its bounty can turn ugly. As the price of food rises the poor, who spend more of their income on it, are hit more than the rich, exacerbating income inequality and leading to disaffection, resentment and, possibly, violence.

Water, energy, and food – this “nexus” of interrelated resource issues continues to garner attention from analysts, policymakers, and the media. Over the next four decades global population is projected to increase to about 9.6 billion and, worldwide, demand for water is projected to increase 55 percent; energy, 80 percent; and food, 60 percent. In a new video about the first of a series of workshops on this nexus, the International Union for Conservation on Nature and the International Water Association explain how they are working to bring together private and public sector water infrastructure experts from across Africa and the world to build partnerships and create some consensus on a “nexus-based approach” to managing scarce resources.

Cambodia to grow by nearly one-third by 2050; Kenya to more than double; Mali to swell to three times its current size. These were the population projections available when Feed the Future, President Obama’s global hunger and food security initiative, was beginning implementation in 19 focus countries around the globe in 2010.

According to the UN, the planet has warmed faster since the turn of the century than any other period on record. Sea-level rise has also increased pace to 0.12 inches a year – almost double the rate observed during the 20^th century. This “unprecedented” rate of climate change is expected to disproportionally impact developing countries, whose socio-economic, political, and physical landscapes make them particularly vulnerable to the effects. The GAIN Index, an interactive mapping tool recently acquired by the University of Notre Dame, can help policymakers prepare for these changes by comparing the climate change vulnerability and readiness of countries around the world.