Achieving Sustainable Development Goal 6.1 for safe, sufficient, and available water has always been important. Compounding challenges—from climate change and increasing migration within and across borders to COVID-19 and its multiple variants—makes achieving the human right to water more urgent. But what is often missed in discussions related to water access is that what determines access to safe and sufficient water is about more than gaps in governance or lack of funding—it is intertwined with entrenched inequality in societies, including the planning of urban spaces.

The recently released draft report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) lays out in no uncertain terms that we face an insurmountable challenge in addressing climate change and its impacts. One shocking takeaway is that sea-level rise is now thought to be irreversible. Indeed, rising temperatures and changing weather patterns threaten to send some cities under water, while causing others to dry up. These opposing challenges increasingly threaten the lives and livelihoods of people in many countries as rapid urbanization is making cities even more densely populated. Floods and droughts threatening the world’s cities will force governments of the world to reevaluate the quality of their infrastructure, their disaster management strategies, and of course, their environmental footprints.

Climate change is no longer an abstract issue we may face in the future. Devastating forest fires, the hottest June on record in the United States, lethal flooding in Europe and Asia, and extreme droughts in Africa reveal that the climate is already changing with extreme consequences. Even more concerning than these events alone is the reality that the drivers of climate change, violent conflict, and fragile states compound each other. Climate change exacerbates unstable social, economic, and political conditions, while conflict and fragility can hinder effective climate change response and adaptation. The U.S. can address the compound risks created by both of these issues only through integration of conflict prevention and climate change in its foreign policy and development assistance.

In 2007, at the (U.S.) National Intelligence Council, a colleague and I set out to determine if we could forecast two distinct political phenomena, the rise and the demise of high levels of democracy. To guide our decade-long forecasts, we relied on a simple statistical model and a spreadsheet of demographic projections from the UN’s 2006 World Population Prospects data set. Now that the experimental period (from 2010 to 2020) has ended, we can look back and ask: How well did these forecasts perform? 

No country has escaped the setbacks caused by COVID-19, but impacts on low-income countries are proving far worse. The World Bank estimates the pandemic and the actions necessary to contain it will drive 150 million people globally into extreme poverty. Post-pandemic, there will likely be long-term effects. Even with this grim reality, there is hope. Governments and international development organizations have accumulated a wealth of knowledge about what works to reduce poverty and increase economic activity. As the Biden administration and other actors work to build a post-pandemic environment, key lessons can be drawn from this knowledge to inform recovery efforts.

Seventy-three percent of women and girls receiving aid at one food program in Uganda reported being afraid during at least one point in the distribution process, said Hope Harriet, Empowered Aid Research Manager. Harriet spoke at the launch event for Empowered Aid’s Toolkit for Planning and Monitoring Safer Aid Distributions. Empowered Aid is a participatory action research project focused on addressing sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) in humanitarian settings and aid distribution. The project is led by the Global Women’s Institute (GWI) in partnership with CARE, the Union of Relief and Development Associations, the International Rescue Committee, and World Vision.

“There is little doubt that tens of millions of people will be displaced over the next two to three decades due in large measure by disaster and other environmental changes affected by climate, with the majority displaced within the borders of their own countries. The United States has a special responsibility to lead on issues of climate change, migration, and displacement,” said Eric Schwartz, President of Refugees International, at a recent event presenting a Blue-Ribbon Task Force report on climate change and migration.

Globally, the demographic transition from high to low fertility and mortality has improved quality of life for billions of people over the past several decades. The average number of children born per woman worldwide decreased from nearly 5 in 1950 to 2.47 by 2020. Improvements in infant and child mortality boosted life expectancy at birth from a global average of 47 years in 1950 to over 72 years today. These gains in fertility and mortality were a result of rising incomes and significant investments and improvements in public health, education, and family planning access—18 months into a global pandemic, it’s becoming increasingly apparent that COVID-19 has disrupted these gains, slowing progress along the demographic transition for those countries in the earliest stages. This World Population Day is therefore an important opportunity to recommit to investments in health and education and resume our progress in improving lives for the world’s poorest and most vulnerable.