The original version of this article, by Lisa Palmer, appeared on Future Food 2050.

As a boy growing up on the shores of Lake Victoria in Kenya, Harvard international development professor Calestous Juma noticed a thing or two about innovations designed to bring more food into his community. He noticed, for instance, that the fishermen were always tinkering with new ways to trap fish while his father, a carpenter, would build the traps. He also noticed that his grandmother, a peanut grower, and other farmers who grew traditional crops such as sweet potatoes, struggled with ways to increase production beyond simply planting the best quality seeds and tubers.

A roadside billboard in Malawi reads: “No woman should die while giving life.” But in many countries, death or grave injury during childbirth is an all too frequent occurrence. [Video Below]

As the largest-ever generation of young people enters adulthood, armed conflict is having a profound effect on their future. People under the age of 24 comprise nearly half the world’s population but are the primary participants in conflict today. Conflict is more prevalent in younger societies, and half of all forcibly displaced people are children.

When she finished her dissertation on migration as a response to climate change in 2003, it was one of only a handful of scholarly papers published on the topic that year, said Susana Adamo, an associate research scientist at Columbia University’s Center for International Earth Science Information Network. But in the decade since, interest in climate migration has exploded – in 2012, more than 10 times as many papers were published. [Video Below]

In 2012, the government of Kenya passed a landmark policy to manage its rapid population growth. The new population policy aims to reduce the number of children a woman has over her lifetime from five in 2009 to 3 by 2030. The policy also includes targets for child mortality, maternal mortality, life expectancy, and other reproductive health measures.

What is the future of population and climate change research, and how can this research impact international policy? In a special issue of Population and Environment, environmental and social scientists look at these questions. “One of the most exciting developments in the climate change research community at present is the development of a new generation of climate scenarios,” write Adrian C. Hayes and Susana B. Adamo in the introduction. These can help facilitate more interdisciplinary research.