The original version of this article, by Kaja Jurczynska, appeared on Population Action International’s All Access blog.

Pakistan is at a crossroads, and not for the reasons you might think.

Against the stunning backdrop of Marojejy National Park, I recently crossed paths with a conservationist from a very different background, working on the opposite side of Madagascar. But, it turns out, the communities we work with face many of the same challenges, and our meeting spawned a new population, health, and environment (PHE) program.

As policymakers respond to the threat of climate and environmental change, the concept of resilience has found itself at the center of discussion. Few scientists and policymakers, however, can come to a consensus on how to define, evaluate, and build resilience.

This past December, Bangladesh turned 42, bringing the country Henry Kissinger once predicted would become a “basket case” into comfortable middle age (though perhaps this analogy breaks down for countries like Switzerland, age 722).

What do melting Himalayan glaciers have to do with food security in Cambodia? Not much, thought an aid practitioner trying to boost food security along the lower reaches of the Mekong River – until she heard a colleague working on the Tibetan Plateau describe the downstream implications of climate change in the Himalayas. Everything she was working on, she suddenly realized, could be literally washed away.

Family planning, which saw a relative decline in financial support from the international development community over the last two decades, is now back in vogue, thanks in large part to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. After spearheading the London Summit on Family Planning in 2012 alongside many governments, the foundation’s recently released 2014 Annual Letter sets out to dispel three “myths” about development, one of which is “saving lives leads to overpopulation.”