In 2015, Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina received the United Nations Champion of the Earth award for her “outstanding leadership on the frontline of climate change.” One of the world’s most populated countries, Bangladesh is also one of the least developed and most vulnerable to climate change. While Bangladesh is well-known for the natural calamities that regularly leave millions of people homeless and displaced, far fewer know that it is also one of the most proactive countries in the fields of disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate adaptation, as well as a leading voice among the poorest countries in climate negotiations.

“Interest in earth observation—and in particular, the value to what we do in development internationally—has never been higher,” said Jenny Frankel-Reed, adaptation team lead at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Frankel-Reed spoke at the Wilson Center’s recent panel discussion of the earth observation data program known as SERVIR, which included insights from USAID’s soon-to-be-released evaluation of the program.

Capable of upending rural livelihoods, compromising institutions of governance, and inducing new patterns of migration and crime, global water stress has emerged as one of the principal threats to U.S. national security, said David Reed, senior policy advisor at the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and editor of WWF’s new book, Water, Security and U.S. Foreign Policy, on June 27 at the Wilson Center. Four defense and development leaders – retired U.S. Marine Corps General James L. Jones; Paula Dobrianksy, vice chairwoman of the National Executive Committee of the U.S. Water Partnership; retired U.S. Navy Admiral Lee Gunn, vice chairman of the CNA Military Advisory Board; and Kristalina Georgieva, chief executive of the World Bank – joined Reed for a panel discussion of water’s central role in global stability and prosperity.

The idea of an insurance pool to address damage from rising sea levels started in 1991 as mere whispers, but by 2015 it grew to become Article 8 of the Paris Agreement. In Climate Change Loss and Damage, Julia Kreienkamp and Lisa Vanhala explore the history of loss and damage in international negotiations and the prospect of its future. One of the more contentious topics in climate negotiations, loss and damage confronts the culpability of wealthy states for the unavoidable consequences of climate change in more vulnerable, non-Western countries. According to Kreienkamp and Vanhala, “the urgency of the issue for developing countries will rise in inverse proportion to how much action is undertaken to mitigate and adapt to climate change.”

“Investing in youth is a recipe for success,” said Elizabeth Dawes Gay, senior policy analyst at the Population Reference Bureau (PRB), during a webinar on June 22, 2017, organized by PRB’s PACE project on the connections between the population, health, environment (PHE) approach to international development, and achieving the demographic dividend.

A slightly modified version of this article originally appeared on the Resilience Compass.

Climate change, civil conflict, and violent extremism are among the most significant threats to human development, peace, and security around the globe. Addressing all three requires immediate action by the United Nations to prevent future crises, yet crucial investments may not yield tangible results for years to come—well beyond democratic term limits.

Unless you are cocooned in a tourist bubble, it is hardly possible to miss God when you visit the Pacific Islands. In every village and on every main street there seems to be a church or temple, packed to bursting point on holy days. It is testament to the considerable influence of spirituality on the way people live in the Pacific.