Evaluation is the lifeblood of any development effort – it’s how implementers know if they’re making a difference, determine what to do more or less of, and enables funders to evaluate cost-effectiveness. But it’s also an inexact science, no more so than when it comes to complex interventions that cut across sectors. [Video Below]

“Saving the planet depends on women achieving full human rights, and that begins with reproductive rights,” writes the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Frances Beinecke in a new set of essays on reproductive health published by the United Nations Foundation and the Aspen Institute.

When I first came on board the Wilson Center last Earth Day, I wrote that I wanted to forge new paths and identify ways that reproductive health, environmental conservation, and women’s empowerment affect our lives today and in the future.

Given growing awareness about environmental change and how it affects human life, it is perhaps not surprising there is also a growing audience for environmental filmmaking. At the 2014 Environmental Film Festival in the Nation’s Capital on March 25, the Wilson Center premiered ECSP’s latest documentary, Scaling the Mountain: Protecting Forests for Families in Nepal. Together with Heart of Iron, a recent film on mining in the Congo Basin, the event took viewers into some of the world’s most remote forests to see how their inhabitants are adapting to rapid changes in the natural resources on which they depend.

If current projections hold, Africa’s population will more than double in 40 years, putting more people at risk of food, water, health, and economic insecurity as the climate changes, as well as negating progress made in reducing carbon emissions per person. But what if it didn’t? [Video Below]

Blue Ventures has become a leader in the population, health, and environment (PHE) community through its work with the remote, semi-nomadic Vezo people living along Madagascar’s southwestern coast. In a new short documentary, The Freedom to Choose: Empowering Communities to Live With the Sea, Blue Ventures describes how their approach has helped the Vezo respond to the combined challenges of resource scarcity, poor reproductive health, and unsustainable livelihoods.