“Community mobilization, local capacity-building, and innovation are the cornerstones of successful development. And that for us includes resilience,” said Franklin Moore, Africare’s Chief of Programs, at a Wilson Center event on family planning and sustainable development. As rapid population growth intersects with challenges like food insecurity and water scarcity, communities in developing countries need not only the capacity to absorb short-term shocks, they also need transformative capacity to address long-term challenges.

Conservationists and development practitioners may not have always seen eye to eye, but a new partnership between a cheetah conservation charity and a network of reproductive health NGOs is making the case for why these groups need to work more closely together.

“When you enable a family to be able to time and space their children, you actually improve the overall health of that family,” said Dr. Alma Golden, the Deputy Assistant Administrator of USAID’s Bureau for Global Health, at a recent Wilson Center event on the role of faith-based organizations in family planning. Faith-based groups are an “irreplaceable asset,” said Dr. Golden, when it comes to fighting stigma and marginalization and promoting positive health behaviors.

Are younger countries at higher risk of civil conflict? The International Crisis Group’s 2018 list of 10 conflicts to watch suggests they might be: Like last year, intra-state conflicts (civil and ethnic conflicts within states, rather than wars between states) dominate the list, and among those, about 70 percent are within youthful countries, or states with a median age of 25.5 years or younger. The only multi-state cluster mentioned in both 2017 and 2018 lists is the Sahel, the world’s most youthful region.

It should be an excellent time to be a young Iranian: High school and college enrollments in the Islamic Republic rank near the top of Muslim-majority countries. Women have only about two children on average, compared to 6.5 in the mid-1980s. And childhood mortality is projected to approach North American levels in the next 15 years. Yet, as the recent protests show, many young Iranians feel left out. Job growth—especially for young adults—has failed to keep pace with development, while persistently high rates of inflation steadily drive up the cost of living and cut deeply into Iranians’ savings.

Just days before the 2016 Summer Olympics began in Rio de Janeiro, the Brazilian city faced an unsavory problem: how to handle its overwhelming sewage. Nearly half of Rio’s municipal wastewater flowed untreated into Guanabara Bay, where the waters were so polluted by sludge that direct contact was deemed a health hazard to Olympic athletes.

I pulled my horse to a stop along the banks of a little stream, which was wedged between two grassy hills speckled with wildflowers and pika holes, to admire the view of the Tibetan-Qinghai Plateau’s rolling hills evolving into snowcapped mountains.

“Conflicts are 35 percent more likely to be resolved and remain peaceful for 15 years if women are involved,” said Carla Koppell, vice president of the Center for Applied Conflict Transformation at the United States Institute of Peace, at a recent Wilson Center event on the role of women in war, security, and peace.