The Sahel – spreading from the Red Sea to the Atlantic as the Sahara Desert transitions to Sudanian savanna – is drought prone and suffers from chronic food insecurity. Yet, the region also boasts the highest fertility rates in the world, and the highest rates of marriage for young girls. This creates unique vulnerabilities that are being compounded by climate change, says ECSP’s Roger-Mark De Souza in an episode of Wilson Center NOW.

The story of Uma Tudu captures the endless cycle of poverty, violence, and suffering faced by too many girls in the northeastern Indian state of Assam.* At 16, following floods that destroyed her village, she traveled more than 1,600 kilometers to Delhi, lured by the promise of a good job and a good life. Instead she was sold as bonded labor.

From the mountains and foothills of the Himalayas to the Terai plains, climate change is rapidly changing life in Nepal. Many communities however, are not strangers to environmental stress; for decades, rapid population growth alongside agriculture and fuelwood collection have degraded land and diminished forests. [Video Below]

There is widespread agreement, and untold publications, that argue urbanization is the defining issue of our time. There are more cities, both large and small, and more people living in those cities than anytime in human history.

Population projections undergird many important policy decisions, from the U.S. government’s Feed the Future program to the Sustainable Development Goals. But they’re not as straightforward as they appear. Demographers often base their estimates on complicated assumptions that aren’t obvious to the end user.

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]

Climate change and conflict – what’s the relationship? In a recently completed set of field-based studies for USAID, the Foundation for Environmental Security and Sustainability set aside “yes-or-no” questions about whether climate change causes conflict and replaced them with pragmatic and politically informed questions about how climate change is consequential for conflict in specific fragile states.