“We don’t know the reason for the death of fish in downstream villages,” Hamberton Nongtdu, a mine owner from the northeastern Indian state of Meghalaya, told me.

On the heels of a landmark U.S.-China climate agreement, 2015 will be a critical year for China’s environmental and energy policy. A revised and much stricter Environmental Protection Law went into force on January 1; new amendments to the Air Pollution Law are likely to be put in place; and the National Development and Reform Commission will draft a new five-year plan.

It is no longer news that Nigeria is a peculiar country, a nation with huge human and natural resources, and whose diversity of peoples and internal geographies is a blessing. Sadly, it is also not news that the country represents at least 10 percent of the global maternal mortality burden, with a currently estimated maternal mortality ratio (MMR) of 487 per 100,000 livebirths (as of 2011).

In his 2007 best-seller, The World Without Us, Alan Weisman explored what would happen to the planet if the human race suddenly vanished – the gradual deterioration of the built environment, the geologic fossilization of our everyday stuff, and the ecological processes that would rebound and thrive without continual and growing human pressure. [Video Below]

One in five African states produce hydrocarbons, and most of these are heavily dependent on oil and gas revenues to finance their governments and generate foreign exchange. Further, an emerging group of East African states are waiting on international oil companies to develop new oil and gas reserves. But Africa’s record using non-renewable oil and gas resources to trigger economic and social development is poor – and plummeting prices may portend more instability to come.

As climate change upends established patterns of life, resilience – the ability of social and ecological systems to mitigate, endure, and adapt to short-term shocks and long-term stressors – has become a buzzword in development and humanitarian circles. [Video Below]