“We can’t talk about a ‘green economy,’ ‘green technologies,’ or ‘green energies’ only by talking about technologies that are stamped out at one end of a large global process and deployed for cleaner energy,” says Stacy VanDeveer in this week’s podcast.

“The green economy, or green energy transition, requires a lot of metals, and a whole lot of things that are mined,” he says. “Because of the scale of the industry now, the scale of the environmental and social change being driven by mining globally is actually quite stunning.”

“Sustainable food security means that food production has to be climate smart,” says Susan Bradley in this week’s podcast. “In order to achieve climate smart food security, we are going to have to build resilience and adaptive capacity into agriculture.”

Bradley, division director for the USAID’s Bureau for Food Security, is working to implement the U.S. government’s Feed the Future Initiative. Unveiled by the Obama Administration in 2009, the $3.5 billion “whole of government” initiative aims to alleviate hunger and increase food security around the world.

“All through Papua New Guinea, in every province, there is logging and mining, but we are the first conservation area,” says Lisa Dabek in this week’s podcast.

Dabek is the director of the Tree Kangaroo Conservation Project (TKCP), an effort of the Seattle Woodland Park Zoo that works to protect tree kangaroos while empowering communities in Papua New Guinea’s YUS Conservation Area to manage their natural resources, health care, and food security.

“Exposing young people to information about PHE [population, health, and environment] and food security dynamics can be a powerful tool to steer their interests and commitment to care for the environment and become sexually responsible individuals,” says PATH Foundation Philippines, Inc. (PFPI)’s Joan Castro in this week’s podcast.

PFPI’s Youth EMPOWER project has trained close to 300 “youth peer educators” in the southern Philippines to promote environmentally sustainable livelihoods, clean up the environment, raise awareness of reproductive health, and encourage participation in local government.

“I have been amazed and inspired by the youth that I’ve worked with, with their dedication and motivation to help their countrymen and to try to make their communities better places,” says Leslie Mwinnyaa in this week’s podcast.

When Mwinnyaa arrived in the Ellembelle district of coastal Ghana as a Peace Corps volunteer she found a multitude of development challenges. Fishermen routinely use illegal techniques like chemicals, lights, and dynamite that decimate fish stocks; “sand winning” and mangrove clearing increases erosion, leaving communities vulnerable to flooding and reducing breeding grounds for local fish; poor waste and refuse management contributes to disease and poor health; and teenage girls have twice the national rate of pregnancy.

“Violence against women is obviously a major factor in maternal and reproductive health,” says Jay Silverman, co-director of the Program on Gender Inequities and Global Health at the University of California, San Diego, in this week’s podcast. From hypertension to early delivery, “all of these things occur at significantly higher rates among women who have an abusive partner.” Silverman gives an overview of the “state of knowledge” about the effect of abuse on mothers and children and suggested that interventions during antenatal care that targets both women and their partners can reduce this important source of child and maternal morbidity.

“We know that a number of these countries in Africa have the least to do with climate change in terms of emissions, but they are the most vulnerable, and they are the ones with the least capacity to deal with the effects of climate change,” says Clive Mutunga in this week’s podcast. Mutunga, a senior associate at Population Action International, discusses the results of a study PAI conducted looking at the entwined and related impacts of climate change and population growth, as well as other factors like water scarcity, on Kenya and Malawi.