A staggering amount of development dollars – one in three, in fact – are lost due to natural disasters and crises. Certain communities are less affected than others by such disasters; they are more resilient. Knowing where vulnerability and strength exist and how to bolster them could help avoid these losses. Yet, today, very little data exists to help development practitioners understand which adaptive capacities are lagging in a given community.

It’s funny when you bump into your neighbors on the other side of the world. Today I spoke about the Global Health Initiative’s recent collaboration with the Population Foundation of India at a regional briefing on health in South and Southeast Asia before the 2013 Women Deliver conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The special roundtable was part of a week-long study tour for a group of U.S. Congressional staffers that work on foreign affairs.

In the Philippines, there are health and development programs that specifically target children, senior citizens, and adults, said Joan Castro, but adolescents are underserved. Nineteen percent of the population is between the ages of 15 and 19, but “they can’t even go to health centers to get the family planning commodities [they desire],” she said. [Video Below]

Today, the Sahara Desert is a vast, nearly lifeless expanse of sand and rock. But ancient cave paintings tell of a time when it was fertile grassland and bands of human hunters chased aurochs and antelope.

Several high-profile reports in the last few months have suggested that climate change and natural resource scarcity contributed to the events that have rocked the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) since December 2010. Thomas Friedman is apparently working on a Showtime documentary about the topic. But what exactly was the role of environmental factors in the mass movement?

Amid the growing number of reports warning that climate change could threaten national security, another potentially dangerous – but counterintuitive – dimension has been largely ignored. Could efforts to reduce our carbon footprint and lower our vulnerability to climate change inadvertently exacerbate existing conflicts – or create new ones?