Natural resources rarely feature during peacebuilding efforts, but there is growing evidence that’s a mistake. Unresolved natural resource management issues can make peace more fragile, while addressing them can act as a bridge toward cooperation.

This year’s World Water Day is taking on a broader theme than years past: sustainable development. The theme makes sense as two major international processes – the drafting of the Sustainable Development Goals to replace the Millennium Development Goals, and the most anticipated UN Climate Summit in years – are taking place in 2015. Decisions made over the next nine months will play a huge role in relationships between nations and global development priorities going forward.

March 8 marked International Women’s Day, which celebrates the economic, political, and social achievements of women in the past and present, while simultaneously calling for greater equality in the future. While many of the day’s discussions focused on economic and social issues, the right to reproductive health is also a crucial element in realizing full equality.

As the international development community looks back on the Millennium Development Goals and ponders what remains to be done under the proposed Sustainable Development Goals, the maternal health field has some reflecting to do, said Dr. Ana Langer, professor and director of Harvard’s Maternal Health Task Force at the Wilson Center on December 1. [Video Below]

“Political demography is a discipline whose time has come,” said Rob Odell of the National Intelligence Council at a gathering of demographers and researchers in New Orleans. “You can sense this inherent dissatisfaction” with a lot of analytical and predictive tools in international relations, he said, and “political demography provides policymakers a way to think about long-term trends.”