Though the bull market for metals and energy may be ending, global food prices remain stubbornly high. The inflation-adjusted FAO Food Price Index is down from the near historic heights of 2007-08 and 2011 but still higher than at any point in the previous 30 years, putting a brake on several decades of progress in reducing world hunger.

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.

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.

From the Roman poet Juvenal’s observations about bread and circuses to Marie Antoinette’s proclamation, “let them eat cake!” the link between food and political stability is well established in pop culture. In academic and policy circles, however, it’s a source of considerable debate.

The culmination of five years of work by three working groups comprising hundreds of scientists around the world, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fifth Assessment was released in parts throughout this year. A newly released synthesis presents their findings in one document.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has called for “urgent, daring action” to help deliver on his pledge to reduce New York City’s greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050. The Mayor asked us all to think about “the reckless way in which we live.”