One in five African states produce hydrocarbons, and most of these are heavily dependent on oil and gas revenues to finance their governments and generate foreign exchange. Further, an emerging group of East African states are waiting on international oil companies to develop new oil and gas reserves. But Africa’s record using non-renewable oil and gas resources to trigger economic and social development is poor – and plummeting prices may portend more instability to come.

Until two years ago, when the National Wildlife Federation pointed out their presence, the 61-year-old steel oil pipelines running beneath the fast-flowing Mackinac Straits between Lake Michigan and Lake Huron were like nearly every other piece of North America’s energy transport network: out of sight and out of mind.

By 2045, global population will be north of 9 billion with increased urbanization and migration, natural resource stress, improved medical technologies, greater use of robotic labor, and a shift towards lifelong (and increasingly online) learning, according to a recent report from the UK Ministry of Defense.

China’s energy investments are on the move, touching nearly every region of the globe from coal and liquefied natural gas imports from Australia to a recent natural gas agreement with Russia and expanded oil drilling in the South China Sea. [Video Below]

Since the early 1990s, the rising price of crude oil and other key natural resources – and the resulting drive by governments and private companies to extract those resources – has led to sharp conflicts in Latin America. At the core of these disputes is the clash between national economic interest and the rights of indigenous people inhabiting the land where most natural resources are located.

The governance challenges of natural resource extraction are enormous. What can be done to improve natural resource governance? ECC’s Stephan Wolters talked to Peter Eigen, founder of Transparency International and chair of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) from 2006 to 2011.

The idea that China, the world’s largest producer of greenhouse gas emissions, could generate a significant portion of its energy from renewable sources might seem like a distant dream, but according to a new report, it’s not so far off. [Video Below]

While climate change has enjoyed a recent spike in news coverage, journalists face a constant challenge to bring sustained attention to other environmental stories, including resource scarcity, the changing oceans, and demographic change. [Video Below]