The original version of this article, by Michael D. Lemonick, appeared on Climate Central.

Water resources, energy, and land use are so mutually dependent that climate-related disruptions to any one of them could lead to economically devastating ripple effects – especially as a growing population puts increasing strains on all three. That’s one conclusion of a recent report issued by a federal advisory committee charged with assessing how climate change has already affected the U.S., and what the future holds.

The original version of this article, by Kagondu Njagi, appeared on Thomson Reuters’ AlertNet.

By the time the violence had died down, more than 80 people lay dead and hundreds were left homeless.

Yet there was scarcely enough water – the resource the Maasai and Kikuyu tribes were fighting over – to wash away the blood that had stained this part of Kenya’s Rift Valley.

The Wilson Center Policy Briefs are a series of short analyses of critical global issues facing the next administration that will run until inauguration day.

Seven billion people now live on Earth, only a dozen years after the global population hit six billion. But this milestone is not about sheer numbers. Demographic trends will significantly affect the planet’s resources and people’s security.

Despite progress over the years, Ethiopia’s Guraghe zone, located in the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People’s Region, faces many development challenges. As senior monitoring and evaluation officer in the Guraghe People’s Self-help Development Organization (GPSDO), I have been working in this region for more than five years trying to reduce poverty and improve socio-economic development. The organization as a whole has been here for more than 50.

The original version of this article, by Elisabeth Rosenthal, appeared in The New York Times.

In the tiny tortillerias of this city, people complain ceaselessly about the high price of corn. Just three years ago, one quetzal – about 15 cents – bought eight tortillas; today it buys only four. And eggs have tripled in price because chickens eat corn feed.

Over the past few years, large-scale acquisition of land by foreign or domestic firms, be they public or private, have been making headlines. But although these “land grabs” have received a great deal of attention, their details remain largely unknown. Which countries are the primary investors? Which are the main targets? What is the land used for?

Last month, Oxfam made an extraordinary request. It asked the World Bank to freeze its investments in agricultural land.

At a time when urbanization and growing service industries are bringing great neglect to agricultural sectors across much of the developing world, why would Oxfam want the World Bank to suspend its generous levels of agricultural funding?

The fault line between nomadic pastoralists and sedentary agriculturalists in sub-Saharan Africa has emerged as one of the most dominant stories of climate-related conflict. But according to Edna Wangui, a professor at Ohio University who studies communities in Kenya and Tanzania, pastoralism is different from many people’s perceptions.