“Made in China” products surround us, yet few consumers have anything more than a foggy idea of where in China their phones, computers, and other goods come from. Hunan Province in South Central China is not only the home of spicy food, but the world’s largest mines for non-ferrous metals used in many electronic devices. Nearly all the glass panels for Apple and Samsung smartphones are manufactured in Hunan as well. While this multibillion-dollar phone industry has been a boon for Hunan’s economy, it has also produced seriously polluted rivers and soil.

Where violent conflict displaces people and disrupts societies, maternal and child health suffers, and such instability is widespread today. According to the UN Refugee Agency, there are 65.3 million forcibly displaced people, 21.3 million refugees, and 10 million stateless people over the world. In addition, more than 65 million people who are not displaced are affected by conflict.

The palm oil sector is at a crossroads. Despite growing awareness of its massive effects on deforestation, the largely unregulated and decentralized industry has struggled to adopt, follow, and document rigorous sustainable sourcing standards.

If we are to avert the worst of climate change impacts, we need better tools for identifying patterns of displacement and migration around climate extremes. In vulnerable developing countries, increasingly frequent and intense storms will likely exacerbate current patterns of displacement and permanent migration. Displacement often leads to humanitarian crises in the short term and can derail progress toward development in the long term. Because of this dangerous potential, displaced persons and migrants are a common focus in humanitarian responses. However disaster responders must often “fly blind” without the benefit of current, accurate information about the worst-affected populations. To better respond to the impacts of climate change as they unfold, we will need more rapid, cost-effective, and accurate methods for identifying patterns of displacement and migration.

Blackened rivers snake the ring roads of Beijing, carrying pollution and often smelly water from one end of the city to another. The most polluted of these have been dubbed “foul and filthy” rivers (黑臭河) by China’s Ministry of the Environment (MEP) and Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development (MOHURD). However, the government has decided to clean these up – and is enlisting the help of the public to do so.

“If we are serious about results, [the Sustainable Development Goals] must be developed from the perspective of the young person, particularly the adolescent girl. It is about her challenges, her rights, and her future. Our collective success begins and ends with her,” said Benoit Kalasa, director of the technical division for the United Nation’s Population Fund at the Wilson Center on October 19. [Video Below]

The renewable energy sector has reached a critical inflection point where costs are competitive with fossil fuels and investment is ramping up in a big way, said more than a dozen experts at a day-long conference co-hosted by ECSP and the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Office of Global Climate Change on October 27.